The Times-Independent

Short on staff, SkyWest flight security breaches spotted by TSA

Moab airport director gets ‘a fire lit’ on more cameras


SkyWest flight security breaches, a missing passenger and some damage to the facility has Canyonlands Field Airport moving ahead with installing more security cameras.

A security breach at Canyonlands Field Airport compelled staff to rescreen passengers.
File photo

A passenger who failed to get on a scheduled flight to Salt Lake City on Nov. 1 and reported missing was later located and found safe, according to the Grand County Sheriff’s Office.

Airport Director Tammy Howland told the Grand County Airport Board there were no cameras installed in the drop-off area at the time of the passenger’s disappearance. At the board’s monthly meeting on Nov. 7, Howland said she was pushing to get additional cameras installed after “quite a few situations recently.”

“We’ve already bought cameras, we’re waiting for them to be installed for additional cameras,” she said. “Some of these things that have been happening, we’re trying to get a fire lit under IT’s feet to get moving and get some more of these security cameras installed.”

Howland also explained a SkyWest security breach that happened during a flight that was witnessed by a TSA agent from a window inside the terminal.

“A lot of people think when you’re at a small airport that it’s pretty chill and laid back,” Howland said. “SkyWest was short-handed on the day that this happened. They had a passenger come out and instead of going up the ramp and getting on the airplane, she went over to the fence and talked to somebody and that’s a big no-no. That’s a security breach — you can have somebody pass something through the fence especially since there was nobody watching.”

A TSA agent was watching, however, and notified a SkyWest employee in the secure area where boarding passes were being scanned.

At the same time, Howland said the TSA agent told SkyWest “that the door to the baggage area where baggage is tested for explosives and then put on the carts was left open and nobody around to monitor that. So the protocol in these situations is that they’re supposed to pull everybody off the airplane and rescreen everybody.”

Howland said when the TSA agent explained the protocol to SkyWest, “they just kind of were like, oh, oops.” Howland said she was called and she talked to the SkyWest pilot about the protocol and then the passengers were taken off the plane and rescreened.

“We were expecting a lot of people to be pretty upset, but for the most part everybody seemed grateful that we were actually following protocols,” Howland said.

Howland also reported to the board the drinking fountains in a secured area had been damaged.

“And of course, unfortunately, that area for those drinking fountains is not captured on any of the cameras over there so we were unable to figure out who it was, but it was clearly malicious,” Howland said. “It wasn’t anything you could do accidentally.”