TSA inspector damages nine planes, puts lives at risk.

The Transportation Security Administration, who I lovingly refer to as the Travel Nazis, have struck again. No, this time they didn’t search a 90-year-old granny in wheelchair -- lest she have bin Laden hidden in her ho-hang. One of their inspectors went much further, at least in terms of the potential harm he could have inflicted. Actually he could have killed people -- lots of people.

This government bureaucrat decided to inspect a group of planes at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. All of them were part of American Eagle, a subsidiary of American Airlines. The brain-dead TSA official wanted to see if he could climb into a airplane from the outside. So he scaled the planes by grabbing on to sensitive equipment on the outside of the planes.

He grabbed devices known as a “total air temperature probe”. These are devices which pilots use to see if they need to de-ice plans in flight. If you don’t de-ice you can crash. If you don’t know you need to de-ice, you don’t de-ice and thus you can crash. So it is important that you know and that means these little suckers are extremely important in saving lives by preventing air plane crashes.

They are so important that there are stickers pasted next to them warning people not to use them as steps. These warnings apparently are heeded by everyone except the inspector from the TSA. Since he is anonymous at this point let us just refer to him as Inspector Clouseau.

Because of Inspector Clouseau’s antics on the tarmac nine commuter aircraft had to be grounded for repairs. Nine planes full of people had their flights cancelled. A spokesman for American Eagle said: “It delayed a lot of folks getting to where they had to go yesterday. This was something we had never experienced before.”

The Allied Pilots Union was furious saying this inspector put a lot of people’s lives in danger. Only in the last level of inspections of the plane, by the pilots before takeoff was the problem noticed. Sam Mayer of the pilot’s union said: “We caught it this time, but who knows if this has happened other times ... and with other planes that are out there.”

Aero-News posted a very irate article on the bumbling inspector. They quoted a pilot on the American Eagle internet forum saying: “The brillant employees used an instrument located just below the cockpit window that is critical to the operation of the onboard computers. They decided this instrument, the TAT probe would be adequate to use as a ladder.” Another pilot said the TSA is “now doing things to our aircraft that may put our lives, and the lives our passengers at risk.”

Aero-News wrote:

This was an extraordinarily dangerous incident, folks. The TSA has neither the mandate nor the knowledge to inspect any aircraft for any reason. The stupidity of this matter is nearly unbelievable... until you hear that the TSA is involved... then it becomes understandable, though still tragic. And I can not tell you how frustrating it is, to see them continue to hurt an industry that they were created to protect.

The TSA has NO BUSINESS putting untrained personnel in a position to damage aircraft. Their bizarre games, in the name of security, do NOTHING to enhance security and do much to inhibit safety. Aviation personnel -- pilots, A&P's, ground personnel -- are all either licensed or supervised by licensed personnel and this kind of tampering, had it been accomplished by anyone else, would have subjected that person to criminal charges.

In this case, ANN strongly recommends and encourages the criminal prosecution of this so-called inspector and his immediate supervisors... it is a matter of time before one of these morons does something stupid and gets someone killed... and with the way these incidents are occurring, we believe it is a virtual certainty that a TSA "Inspector" will hurt or kill someone in such a manner. No kidding.

....We're fed up with the incompetence of this organization... and while it was simply 'annoying' when they were sniffing our shoes or trying to rip off our laptops, it gets downright threatening when they start tampering with our airplanes.