LAX officials say contractor mistakenly triggered emergency alert

An emergency message displayed on monitors telling passengers at Los Angeles International Airport to evacuate was mistakenly triggered by a contract worker, airport officials said.

At 9:47 p.m. on Monday, passengers at the Tom Bradley International Terminal alerted police to the message on monitors behind ticketing counters, which read, “An emergency has been declared in the terminal. Please evacuate.”

A review of the airport’s computer systems showed that an airline contractor with authorized access to the display system accidentally caused the override of screens that normally display the status of flights, according to LAX spokeswoman Nancy Castles.

“After the mistake was discovered, airport staff removed the message from all the monitors by 9:54 p.m.,” Castles said in an email.

The airline contract employee was “programming airline check-in information into a set of monitors for a particular flight when he accidentally activated the pre-programmed emergency terminal evacuation message,” Castles said. “The airport’s information technology staff will be looking at ways to ensure this accident does not happen again in the future.”

Operations personnel at LAX initially believed the display could be the work of a hacker and moved quickly to review their computer systems to investigate the breach, authorities told The Times.

Officers quickly swarmed the terminal near the boards to search for whoever was responsible for the breach. Authorities at the time said it was not immediately clear whether the intrusion was made from another site.

Earlier this month, an electronic sign near USC was apparently hacked to display inappropriate messages about the Los Angeles Police Department.

Authorities called the possibility of a breach at LAX far more serious because it could have sparked widespread panic at one of the nation’s busiest airports.

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