Many frequent fliers might think the current airline travel experience isn’t worth paying for, but they aren’t trying to hop on a plane without buying a ticket. A 39-year-old Norwegian man found a way past security and onto a flight without a ticket at Munich Airport twice earlier this month. The sly stowaway allegedly exploited the German facility’s automated checkpoint gates by walking through closely behind a paying passenger.
The bold traveler first got passed airport security on August 4 and boarded a flight to Hamburg. The cabin crew only discovered him because the flight was fully booked, the National Post reports. The airline handed him over to the police, but he was later released for an explained reason. I wouldn’t have taken the stroke of luck as a sign to just go home and not try it again. However, our stowaway had different plans.
The very next day the same man got through security again and boarded a Lufthansa flight to Stockholm. He found a seat this time and flew to Sweden without any issue. The stowaway almost got away with it, but then he tried to fly back to Munich on the same plane. Staff then handed him over to the police. While the 39-year-old is under investigation for unlawful entry and transport fraud, law enforcement and Lufthansa are looking into how someone was able to get so far without a ticket. A Munich Airport spokesperson told the Independent:
“The airline is doing the same for the boarding pass check at the gate, which is their responsibility. We have already sensitized access control staff and are deploying additional staff. We are also in contact with our partners, the authorities and the airline.”
“The person passed through the security checkpoint in a regular manner and without any irregularities, as the state police has already informed us based on their investigation.”
Getting past airport security without a ticket is less rare than you’d assume. Earlier this year, the Transportation Security Administration had to address a woman who simply walked through an empty security checkpoint in Nashville and got on an American Airlines flight to Los Angeles. Agencies really aren’t proving they are more than security theater and a catch-net for irresponsible gun owners.