Officials are investigating how a woman flew to Los Angeles without a ticket
An investigation is underway into how a woman boarded an American Airlines flight at Nashville International Airport last week and flew to Los Angeles without showing a ticket, officials said Friday.
Law enforcement encountered Flight 1393 upon arrival at Los Angeles International Airport on Feb. 7, American Airlines said in a statement. The Federal Bureau of Investigation detained a woman for questioning after the flight landed, Laura Eimiller, a spokeswoman in Los Angeles, said Friday.
The airline said it was assisting law enforcement in the investigation, but did not say whether its employees properly checked for a ticket at the gate.
The woman was not named because no charges had been filed as of early Friday. Ms Eimiller said interviews were still taking place.
Mark Howell, a regional spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration, said the woman walked through the agency's document checkpoint at the Nashville airport around 6:30 a.m. local time.
“She got in line and lined up but went under one of the stanchions,” he said Friday. “She did not go to ticket and document control.”
After passing the document check, the woman and all her personal belongings underwent a security check, he added.
The episode marks the second time in four months that a traveler has boarded a flight to Los Angeles without the correct credentials.
In November, a man believed to be a Russian citizen pushed his way through security at Denmark's Copenhagen airport and flew to Los Angeles, carrying only Russian and Israeli identification cards in his bag, officials said.
The man, Sergei Vladimirovich Ochigava, told investigators that he was unsure whether he had a plane ticket to Los Angeles and that he could not remember how he got on the plane. He also claimed he could not remember how he got through security without a ticket.
Mr. Ochigava was accused of being a stowaway on an airplane, a misdemeanor, and was found guilty last month. This was reported by the US Attorney's Office for the Central District of California. He was sentenced to prison and three years of supervised release on Feb. 5, according to court documents.
The TSA, which oversees security and passenger screening at U.S. airports, has had blunders in the past, including in 2022 when a Frontier Airlines flight from Cincinnati to Tampa was diverted to Atlanta after a passenger was stabbed with a box cutter seen. The TSA later said errors in screening procedures were to blame for that episode.