Posted on 06/15/2008 3:18:09 AM PDT by billorites
AIRPORT guards stopped a man boarding a plane — for wearing a Transformers T-shirt showing a cartoon gun.
Brad Jayakody, 30, was shocked when he was told to change his top if he wanted to catch his flight from Heathrow’s Terminal 5.
IT consultant Brad — on a British Airways trip with four colleagues to Dusseldorf, Germany — asked to see the security chief.
He thought the boss would "see sense" — but he backed up the decision and threatened him with ARREST. Aussie-born Brad said: "My mate set off the alarms and was searched.
"But then the guy told me to stop and said ‘you cannot get on the plane because there is a gun on your T-shirt’."
The top has the Transformers film character Optimus Prime on the front.
Brad, of Bayswater, West London, added: "It’s a cartoon robot with a gun as an arm. What was I going to do, use the shirt to pretend I have a gun?
"I was flabbergasted. I thought the supervisor would come over and see sense, but he didn’t. After I changed he said if I changed back I would be arrested."
A spokesman for Heathrow operator BAA said: "If a T-shirt had a rude word or a bomb on it for example, a passenger may be asked to remove it.
"We are investigating what happened to see if it came under this category."
Last year Gatwick guards made a woman hand over a beef sandwich before boarding and last week a PhD student was stopped for wearing a gun-shaped charm necklace at an airport in Canada.
Good thing he wasn’t wearing a PUNISHER t-shirt, they’d have probably hung him.
On the other hand, we have a grown man who travels wearing a T-shirt with cartoon characters on it. There is no dog in this fight, so it's hard to have one.
He should have said “okay” and replaced it with an “I love George Bush” t-shirt.
Some people don't know how to dress.
I've gone through TSA check points with a carry bag with SIGARMS printed in big old letters on it, and with my S&W range bag as a carry bag. The ONLY times I've been subjected to the "Please step over here, sir, and allow me to assess your body fat percentage," treatment was when I was NOT carrying bags with explicit references to firearms.
Go figger.
I have a t-shirt and I’m not afraid to use it!
I wonder what would happen if I had “Islamic Holy Pouch” embroidered on the side of a carry-on?
I remember playing Bomb Squad on the Intellivision - cool game.
Actually, Muhammed Atta and his pal WERE given secondary security that day, but they still got on the plane. I believe this image was taken at the Portland Jetport in Portland, Maine, just before the two terrorists flew to Boston.
A ticket agent, when he saw Atta, was convinced that Atta was a terrorist, then he felt ashamed of himself for mentally profiling an Arab man. Today, that ticket agent has feelings of guilt, but I don’t fault him. Our overly PC society is to blame, and things haven’t changed much since 9/11.
Indeed, and my post was to point out that using a t-shirt as a tool to identify a threat is a colossal waste of time. The trained, motivated terrorists obviously knew how to infiltrate security and used common and non-distinct clothing as part of their uniform. they certainly wouldn't wear an image of a gun on themselves.
My point was to look for the 17-39 year old Arabs and you've effectively screened, but as you say, that's insensitive.
Stupidity reigns supreme with bureaucrats throughout the world.
Smart move. That dangerous T-shirt could have transformed into a real gun at any moment and wiped out the whole plane! And then the transformer could have turned into a giant flying bug and reigned horror over London. Can’t be too careful.
I probably read a bunch of your reviews back then.
Every month i would walk a mile down the street to buy the latest issue of Electronic Games and a few other game mags.
I think i still have them all up in the attic.
Intellivision Stinks!!
Atari Rules!!
Actually, I was a Coleco partisan. The 2600 had games that maximized the feeble specs on the machine. The 5200 controllers were unusable on most games. The Intellivision was a bad value compared to the competition, and had nasty controllers as well.
I had a 2600, 5200, Intellivision II, ColecoVision/Adam, GCE Vectrex, and even a Magnavox Odyssey². I never wrote for Electronic Games. I wrote for “Video Games” and “Video Gaming Illustrated.”
Which magazines did you write for?
Why R People So Friggun STUPID? What is the Gubmt but an expression of our collective stupidity? Why do we bother having gubmts?
They are going to turn me into a revolutionary. Good thing I still have the great mind numbing sedative for the masses sports and beer.
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