What just happened at MSP?

Note: I am not sure exactly where this one belongs, but since it involves security, an airplane, some discovered substances (?), and an arrest that seems to have fallen down the memory hole ... I'll start it out here.

This is an account of a curious incident that took place on a flight as related to one of the bloggers at Powerline.com.

It seems this story was told by a friend who had to fly into Minneapolis-St. Paul airport for a dinner engagement.

On Sunday, October 18, I was a passenger onboard Delta Flight 821, with direct service from LAX to Mpls-St Paul, when something quite scary happened. I am still pondering the implications of what I saw and heard that day.

Flight 821 departed Los Angeles at 11:10 am that Sunday, touching ground in Minneapolis a bit before our scheduled 4:30 pm arrival time. Up to that point, the flight had been smooth and uneventful – but that was about to change.

The account goes on to relate how the flight had been smooth up until arrival where, instead of disembarking, the pilot told everyone to wait for the TSA agents to come aboard to "chat" with a passenger.

A few minutes later, a handful of agents wearing dark pants and black flak jackets, with guns holstered in tan leather belts underneath their jackets, walked briskly down the aisle. The group of agents stopped at the row behind me, Row 18 (my seat was 17E, the middle seat of row 17), addressing the passenger seated in the 18F window seat, a young woman somewhere between 18 and 25, dressed in all-black, with long wavy dark hair and a pale face.

The agents took her off the plane, but she wasn't the only one. Another pair of agents also removed a similarly dressed young man from further back on the plane.

After the two were taken off, another agent returned to the seat she had been sitting in to search it. At this point, the person telling the story stopped watching, but the passenger next to him said it looked like the agent removed two bags of drugs from under the seat followed by a gun.

The curious thing for the person telling the story was that there was no story in the paper the next day, not even after they recovered a gun off the plane.

However, no such story appeared in the paper Monday morning, prompting my friend to reach out to his Strib contact, who in turn asked if one of her reporters could get in touch with me to hear my story. I agreed and that afternoon Strib reporter Paul Walsh called me. Walsh started by saying he had gotten the gist of the story through his editor, and had just spoken to someone at the Mpls-St Paul Airport Security, asking that person if some sort of raid had occurred the day before onboard a Delta plane. Walsh then told me that the security person had replied that (here I quote from memory): “None of our agents were involved in a raid yesterday.”

Walsh asked me to recount my story with as many details as possible, recording while I spoke, occasionally asking a few clarifying follow-up questions. Afterward, he thanked me, telling me that he would now call the MSP Airport Security office again to present them with the specifics of my account.

Half an hour later, Walsh called back, telling me that he once again had spoken to someone at MSP Airport Security, and it appeared that there was no story after all.

“They told me that no arrests were made yesterday onboard your flight,” he said. “And they also said that that what was found (I always thought this was curious wording) under those seats was not drugs,” he continued. “And they explained to me that the reason those two individuals were led off the plane was that they resembled two people who had skirted airport security at LAX.”

So, was that all? Was it a security dry run? A test? Or was there more that they aren't telling anyone?

I hope it's the former, but if it was, why didn't they just say so?

a reply to: ketsuko

Interesting!

The account of seeing a gun and drugs was only second hand. I don't know, of course, but I don't see why it couldn't have been as the reporter said: two people were deemed suspicious on departure, were checked out by security and released.

a reply to: DelMarvel

That much is true, but why would a random person simply lie to other random people? I'm not saying it's impossible, but it makes no sense.

I am not surprised by this in the least. Awhile ago I posted a thread about the TSA being a joke. Someone I knew worked overnights at MSP cleaning planes.
So the basic gist of it is that after a person is hired to clean planes at MSP they then are not required to go through any security when reporting for work each night. Almost all of the people on this crew bring in backpacks containing sweatshirts, spare shoes, etc. As a hypothetical I asked if it would be possible to bring weapons, drugs, etc. onto a plane and stash said items. The reply was that it was,in fact , absolutely possible. The flight crews are already stressed and running on fumes, so I would not rely on them as a "safety" of any kind. I dont know who the men boarding the plane were. I think I can assume that they were NOT TSA. reply to: ketsuko

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: DelMarvel

That much is true, but why would a random person simply lie to other random people? I'm not saying it's impossible, but it makes no sense.

Are you talking about the passenger who reportedly said he/she saw a gun and drugs? It might not have been a lie, it might have been a mistake. The anonymous person telling the story didn't see it so it's a third person account. It also doesn't make sense that a passenger would try to bring a gun onto a plane while smuggling drugs and that the agents would conduct the search in front of other passengers.

"I know this music. Lets_change_the_beat." --Zog, The Fifth Element

How do we know it was drugs and not radioactive materials or worse, plague?

If a stewardess saw something and it was really dangerous, they would have arrested them still in the air or, they would have cleared the plane on landing.

Probably some dope and a pipe.

How does one wear a gun on a belt under a flak jacket?

Makes no sense in the essential bits, "No arrests", "They resembled two people who had skirted security" yet the two led off the plane mustn't have skirted anything since they were not arrested, and their boarding must have been in order from the outset. It looks like an exercise to me.

More interesting is that NO ONE reports taking any cell phone video. Usually the first thing that opens up after the seat belt signs go off are the phones turning on.

originally posted by: Shamrock6
How does one wear a gun on a belt under a flak jacket?

Not only that but the article has a lot of specific but irrelevant information. Like the gun belt and it being tan leather, black pants, row seat assignment, detailed description of the female.

Just seems kinda weird.