One man tossed his bike over a fence and pedaled across a runway at Chicago O’Hare, stopping to knock on a terminal door. Another rammed a sports-utility vehicle through a security gate at Philadelphia International and sped down a runway as a plane was about to land.
At Los Angeles International, a mentally ill man hopped the fence eight times in less than a year – twice reaching stairs that led to jets.
Several hundred times over the last decade, intruders have hopped fences, slipped past guardhouses, crashed their cars through gates or otherwise breached perimeter security at the nation’s busiest airports – sometimes even managing to climb aboard jets.
An Associated Press investigation found 268 perimeter breaches since the start of 2004 at airports that together handle three-quarters of U.S. commercial passenger traffic. And that’s an undercount, because two airports among the 31 that AP surveyed didn’t have data for all years. None of the incidents involved a terrorist plot, according to airport officials.
“Enough is enough,” U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said in response to the AP report, adding that since a breach last April in San Jose she’s been asking the Transportation Security Administration and airport officials to “work together and resolve this alarming situation.”