Monterey Regional Airport discusses San Jose stowaway incident
In light of this weekend’s security breach at San Jose Mineta International Airport, we decided to find out what the Monterey Regional Airport is responding. On Sunday, the FBI said a 15-year-old hopped over a fence at the San Jose airport, hid in the wheel well of a Hawaiian Airlines flight and survived, only to be discovered on the tarmac in Maui.
At Monterey Regional Airport, managers said the talked about the San Jose incident at a meeting this morning, just so everyone was aware.
They said security is one of the most important things they manage.
Just because the tarmac is dark at night, doesn’t mean it’s not being watched.
“A huge roll, it’s a significant issue we deal with everyday,” said Monterey Regional Airport general manager Tom Greer.
Greer said security is the top issue at every airport and stowaways aren’t common.
“It’s rare mainly because of the diligence that the airport operators and the TSA and the industry as a whole pays to security. We’ve all become much more security conscious since 9-11,” Greer said.
He calls this weekend’s stowaway incident, a wake-up call for the aviation industry.
“Just serves to heighten that awareness and makes us really re-focus and take another look at how we do things,” Greer said.
Monterey’s airport may be smaller than the San Jose’s airport, but Greer said it still has the same types of defense mechanisms in place.
“Fences, barriers and cameras and lighting and distance,” Greer said.
But since Monterey is a regional airport, there’s other businesses and private jet hangars on the property. Greer said that makes security on the tarmac a little tricky at times.
“There have been these inadvertent people who just got lost driving around on the airfield and that’s a real significant issue for us too,” Greer said.
The Federal Aviation Administration said 105 people have tried to fly inside wheel wells worldwide since 1947. The survival rate is only 24 percent. Greer said Monterey Regional works hard to monitor the tarmac closely, using people on the ground and eyes in the sky.
“Today it would not be unusual, in fact it would be expected that anyone that would be seen on the tarmac or in an area where they shouldn’t be seen, they would be challenged,” Greer said.
Greer said the airport also has its own police officers who regularly patrol looking for anything suspicious. TSA also plays a major role in making sure ticketed passengers follow the rules.
