4-Year-Old Latest No-Fly-List Addition
Told he couldn't board
the plane because he was on a TSA terrorist No-Fly List, Edward
Allen was upset.
"I don't want to be on the list," Allen said. "I want to fly and
see my grandma."
You see, Edward Allen is four years old.
"Is this a joke?" Edward's mother, Sijollie Allen, asked
Continental Airlines ticket agents when they denied her child
boarding on December 21st, for a flight from Houston to New
York.
Allen told a reporter for the Associated Press that she and her
"terrorist" son were finally able to board, after much pleading and
a call from the ticket counter to persons unknown. She assumed that
it was a one-time error -- after all, what knucklehead would think
a young boy was actually the wanted terrorist? -- but when they
went to return home to Houston the day after Christmas, they got
put through the wringer again.
Sijollie Allen says it was actually worse this time, although
once again they were ultimately allowed to board. "You're lucky
that we're letting you through," she says the Continental workers
told her.
"I know the government
is trying to protect because of the terrorist attacks, but common
sense should play a role in it," Allen told AP.
The TSA -- hold on to your hats -- agrees. A TSA spokeswoman
said that TSA instructs airlines to disregard name-matches on the
No-Fly or Selectee lists, if the passenger is a child under 12
years old.
"We do not require ID for children because there are no children
on the list," the TSA's Carrie Harmon said.
"If it's a child, ticket agents have the authority to
immediately de-select them."
Nobody knows why the Continental agents didn't do that, but it's
a pretty safe assumption that they would have done it if they had
known it was OK.
After September 11, 2001, the TSA's countermeasures included the
establishment of two lists against which passenger names must be
checked, the No-Fly list, which is reserved for actual suspected
terrorists, who are denied flight, and the Selectee list, for
individuals with nebulous terrorist connections who are permitted
to fly but subjected to additional security checks.
The lists have produced much aggravation and black humor; AP
mentions previously-"listed" celebrities as Rep. John Lewis (D-GA),
Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), singer Yusuf Islam (formerly "Cat
Stevens"), and actor David Nelson. Some of the problems come
because the list phonetically matches names, yielding thousands of
false positives; some come because any alias used by a terrorist is
added to the list his actual name is on.
That's what happened to Ted Kennedy; some terrorist used the
alias T. Kennedy, and so the TSA banned the Senator too. The ironic
thing is that "T" is not even Ted's initial; his given name is
Edward. He was able to get himself delisted, but it wasn't easy --
even for a powerful Senator.
(At one time several members of the Aero-News staff were on the
Selectee list, in an act of apparent retaliation for some of our
previous reporting and editorializing on the TSA. Our names appear
to have been removed also.)
Aero-News reported once on a case where immigration agents
deporting a terrorist who had committed no crime in the USA but was
an undesirable immigrant, had their terrorist "rescued" by TSA
agents and nearly released, because, of course, he was on the
No-Fly list. (It cost the ICE agents their Christmas holiday but
they did get the guy out of the country, finally).
If the list has led to
the location or apprehension of any actual terrorists, the security
people haven't mentioned it.
It has definitely kept some out of the country (occasionally by
forcing airliners to divert, a method that's not very popular with
the airlines or the other passengers).
But in this particular instance, it appears that the TSA policy
had more scope for common sense than Continental's implementation
of it. One hopes that Continental can get its ticket agents
retrained... perhaps by next Christmas.
And Edward Allen can fly and see his grandma.