Hijacker May Have Sneaked Gun On at L.A.

As federal officials sought to determine how a Cuban refugee smuggled a starter pistol and two knives past airport checkpoints and onto a jetliner in a failed hijacking attempt, an airline spokesman said Sunday that a preliminary investigation determined the security breach apparently took place at Los Angeles International Airport.

Federal Aviation Administration officials said they were uncertain whether Pedro Rene Comas-Banos, a 37-year-old immigrant with a history of mental problems, was carrying the weapons when he boarded an American Airlines flight at Los Angeles or later in Dallas-Ft. Worth, where he boarded a connector flight bound for Miami.

But after their own preliminary investigation, American Airlines officials are focusing on Los Angeles as the point where Comas-Banos smuggled the gun, knives and a pair of scissors past airport security. The incident follows by less than two years the intensification of airport security after a disgruntled airline employee boarded a plane with a gun and used it to shoot the pilot and himself.

“There was a concern initially that he did not have these items when he went through the airport in LAX and could have left the concourse in Dallas-Ft. Worth and gotten them there,” said airline spokesman Ed Martelle, explaining that the concourse is beyond security checkpoints.

“(But) we have strong reason to believe that he did not leave the concourse at Dallas-Ft. Worth airport.”

It was shortly after midnight Saturday that Comas-Banos boarded a flight to Dallas-Ft. Worth at Los Angeles carrying two red satchel bags. By 7 a.m., he was on the second leg of his journey, flying to Miami on Flight 1098 with more than 100 other passengers.

As the plane descended in its approach to Miami, Comas-Banos took the starter pistol out of his bag and demanded to be flown to Jose Marti International Airport outside Havana, threatening to blow up the plane. But the hijacking attempt was foiled when the pilot turned back about 60 miles south of Miami because the plane was low on fuel.

Martelle said that screening devices at Los Angeles were immediately checked after news of the aborted hijacking.

The airline’s screening system in Los Angeles is tested twice a month by the FAA and has consistently received high ratings, he added.

In some cases, passengers are allowed to board with scissors or knives--if the instruments are determined to be non-threatening, Martelle said. “It’s entirely possible the screener may have seen the knives and, because they were below FAA standards, didn’t think anything of it.”

Meanwhile, Los Angles FBI agents were gathering background information on Comas-Banos, who arrived in the United States nine years ago on the Mariel boat lift and has since escaped twice from mental hospitals, according to spokesman Paul Miller.

Comas-Banos, who is being held in the Metropolitan Correctional Center--a federal facility just south of Miami--is scheduled to appear Tuesday in federal magistrate’s court in Miami on a charge of air piracy.