Ian Austin , CanWest News Service; Vancouver Province
Published: Wednesday, November 14, 2007
VANCOUVER - An Australian traveller claims there was a “major security breach” at Vancouver International Airport after he was issued a duplicate boarding pass that let him past two security points this week.
Rex Chen, 33, had just boarded Air Canada Flight 229, and was settling into his seat for the flight to Toronto.
Then another passenger, Suobin Chen, approached with a boarding pass for exactly the same seat.
“I realized then that they had checked me in as someone else,” said Chen, who works in Beijing as a translator. “They gave me a boarding pass, and I checked through two security points with it.”
Chen was thrown off the flight. His luggage continued on to Toronto, and he was put on a later flight.
Now he wants to know how it could have happened.
“It was a major security breach,” he said from his Toronto hotel room after his Nov. 11 flight.
“They took me off the plane, but they took off with my checked baggage, except it was checked in with (Suobin Chen’s) name.”
Air Canada spokeswoman Angela Mah conceded the airline made a mistake.
“This, obviously, should not have happened,” said Mah.
“Incidents like this are very, very rare.”
Canadian Air Transport Security Authority spokeswoman Anna-Karina Tabunar said her organization did nothing wrong.
“This is definitely the responsibility of the airline,” said Tabunar.
“The mandate of CATSA is to screen passengers and their luggage. Verification of the boarding process is outside CATSA’s mandate.”
Tabunar said the airline is responsible for double-checking tickets and identification twice - once at the check-in counter, and once again before boarding the plane.
She said passengers must present boarding passes before they go through security screening, but at that point the boarding passes are not cross-checked with identification.
Mah said Air Canada has launched an internal review of what went wrong, but said that at no time were passengers placed at risk.
“We are completing our own internal review,” said Mah. “There is no reason to believe that the security of the passengers was compromised.
“We are in compliance with all of Transport Canada’s regulations.”
Chen thinks that if he had just found an empty seat, no one would have questioned him.
In effect, Chen said, he would have been a passenger who hadn’t been checked in, who went through two security procedures unnoticed with incorrect identification.
“I suspect if I sat down quietly in coach, they wouldn’t have found me,” said Chen, who didn’t realize his boarding pass was made out in someone else’s name until he was challenged.
“They let me through without a ticket. They didn’t know my name.
“Then they took me off the plane, but kept my luggage on the plane with (Suobin’s) name.”
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Vancouver Province