Bomb Victim’s Parents Test Airline Security
The parents of a woman killed in the bombing of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, said Friday they had smuggled a plastic explosive onto a domestic flight to prove that airline and airport security remain lax.
Carole Johnson, whose daughter Beth Ann was among the 270 people killed in the 1988 bombing, said in a television interview that she and her husband had successfully carried the explosive onto a USAir flight leaving Boston’s Logan Airport last Saturday.
The Johnsons said they had disarmed the explosive, put it into a lead-lined bag and passed through the airport’s electronic detector.
“As we walked through there I was very calm because I knew we were going to get away with it,” Johnson said.
Johnson said in the interview with Pittsburgh, Pa., television station KDKA that she and her husband bought the explosive in Massachusetts while attending a gathering of Lockerbie victims’ relatives.
A spokesman for the Massachusetts Port Authority, which operates Logan Airport, told WBZ television that each airline is responsible for its own security.
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