Posted on 12/24/2001 11:16:25 AM PST by Straight Vermonter
DANIA BEACH, Fla. (AP) - A bullet found outside a gate at Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport prompted authorities to evacuate a busy concourse Monday, delaying flights up to three hours.
A passenger discovered the small-caliber bullet at about 7:40 a.m. outside the gate leading to Spirit Airlines Flight 604 to New York's LaGuardia Airport, FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela said.
The passenger alerted sheriff's deputies who were providing security at the airport. Deputies evacuated the concourse and searched for weapons using dogs but found nothing, Orihuela said. No arrests were made.
Police searched the bags of passengers on Flight 604, and two planes loaded with passengers awaiting takeoff were ordered back to the terminal.
Airport spokesman Jim Reynolds said the concourse reopened after about two hours, but some flights were running about three hours late.
``This will have a ripple effect throughout the day,'' Reynolds said. ``Fortunately, this is not the most heavily traveled day of the holidays. These are last-minute travelers.''
Quick! Evacuate the airport! the city! the entire state!
Over a single bullet ??? .... they'd sh$% a brick if they found my car in their airport.
Cowards.
Oh, oh, oh - protect me, protect me.
It's enough to make you vomit.
prambo
I will again trust the airlines with my life when they trust me with my firearm.
The conspiracy of ignorance masquerades as common sense.
They are fools, which I why I refuse to fly.
Exactly. Someone found the bullet in his/her pocket and did an 'Oh S**t!'.
I took my first post-911 flight a couple of weeks ago and found myself in this situation. I packed carefully the night before, making sure I left my pocketknives, etc. at home. I drove to the airport from work, but just before I left a mechanical engineer gave me a couple of prototype pieces hot off the punch. One of the pieces had a sharp tapered angle to it and could have been used as a knife in a desperate situation. I threw the pieces into my carry-on bag, making a mental note to take them out and leave them in my truck before I went in the airport terminal. Guess what? Right--I forgot! I didn't want to ditch the prototypes because they were the only ones built, so I figured I'd just try to talk my way out of it and if they were confiscated then they were confiscated--nothing I could do about it. To make a long story short, I made it through 3 searches and no one said a word. Security was interested in what might be behind my belt buckle and hat band, but didn't say a word about the sharp metal object in my carry-on bag.
Well stated. People are such sissies.
Barney: "Gosh, Andy, I don't know....I had it this morning when I went out to the airport...it musta fallen out of my pocket somewhere".
With this kind of overreaction, you could bring the nation's air system to a halt with a couple of dozen volunteers.
Exactly right.
These idiots are searching their own pilots, and confiscating fingernail clippers from them.
Until this hysteria passes I'd just as soon hop a freight and share a boxcar with rabid hobos than fly on a commercial passenger aircraft.
Exactly. The only reason that it hasn't happened yet is that your typical "Abdul" or "Mohammad" is just too stupid to figure it out, given their abysmal track record at other things.
And even if Abdul did try it, he would somehow screw it up.
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