A man was recently found guilty of being a stowaway on a recent flight. Here’s how this happens.
In season one , episode 13 of the hitUSA seriesMonk , the premiss of the murder mystery that the long ache Adrian Monk must solve necessitate a rider sneaking onto the aeroplane disguise as a different person . I wo n’t give the whole story away ( it ’s a fun sentry ) , but I always found that this woman ’s ability to sneak onto the plane was a flake suspicious . I mean , the episode aired in October 2002 , just over a year after 9/11 . Security was n’t precisely lax .
But even in 2024 , it turns out it ’s actually still potential for a someone to board an plane without a ticket . Back on November 4 , 2023 , a 46 - year - erstwhile man discover Sergey Vladimirovich Ochigava boarded a plane in Denmarkheaded for Los Angeles . On January 27 , he was found guilty of being a stowaway and can face up to five years in Union prison , agree to theNew York Post .
The freehanded question ? How did a military man pilfer onto an airplane move around internationally in 2024 ? talk withRich Davis , senior security advisor at security department company International SOS , we got into just how possible it is to actually pussyfoot on an airplane on a flight . For starters , it is an fantastically rare happening Davis described as a " periodic multi - million - to - one event " that is part of government and airline security preparation processes .
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" When thing happen , the account are say over and over again to seek to understate recurrence , " Davis told Thrillist . " There ’s always a possible action that there ’s a partitioning somewhere in the process and it always rises to the attention of people to the media , to the airline , to the airports , to the government . "
No humans are perfect
As for the specific recent incident necessitate Ochigava , Davis outlined the fact that we still do n’t have the precise point on how he was able-bodied to board the plane — human error may have been a factor . " error or failure that happen — that is possible , " Davis said . " It ’s also possible that there were no human error here . "
The case of error that leave a successful stowaway office to happen is very dependent on the circumstances . Famed " serial stowaway " Marilyn Hartmann stowed forth on at least 22 flight , and did so by exploiting various weaknesses in airport security . She often simply found ways towalk through TSA without a embarkment pass . In a2021 television interview , she enounce that she was once capable to simply follow through another mortal carrying a bag , because everyone assume she was with the other person .
It ’s these kinds of human errors that could have allowed Ochigava to make it onto the LAX - bound trajectory without a boarding pass . Davis speculated that it could have simply been a matter of the human being observe logic gate agents and finding a weakness in the boarding security appendage so that he could exploit it . " drome security system , airline security around the world is ground on layer after layer after layer of processes because there is human error , " Davis said .
Technology will help
But , as the airport security process becomes more and more linked to pull ahead technology , it will be less potential — even as it is already improbably rare — that this method of sneaking onto an aeroplane is potential .
" engineering is unendingly amend and continuously make it more and more hard for mass that have ill intent to carry through what they ’re trying to do , whether it ’s tenner - beam simple machine , metal detection , liquid detecting , all of the above , " Davis excuse .
Some parts of the security process are still kick the bucket to rely on the industry of security workers , even as applied science advance . Real IDis a perfect example of this . The forms of recognition will never be more advanced than they will be when that requirement first lead into effect . But it ’s not going to change the requirement ofshowing our boarding pass to a TSA officerto get past the checkpoint .
" Real ID is a very , very safe sweetening that once in place really assists the TSA at the tip where we are present our ticket and our ID . It wo n’t of necessity enhance the gate embarkment unconscious process at this juncture , veracious ? "
So possibly with all of this new technology Monk ’s murder suspect would n’t have been able to abstract onto the aeroplane at all . But , it is still potential we might see one or two stories about passengers designedly sneaking onto flights in the skinny hereafter — and we will surely keep hearing about people whoaccidentally got on the wrong flight . That ’s human erroneous belief we can count on .
