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A traveler landed at LAX without a boarding pass, the second time in four months

Passengers at Los Angeles International Airport on Wednesday.
Travelers wait in line at LAX in January. This month, a passenger without a boarding pass flew from Nashville to LAX.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times )
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The Transportation Security Administration is investigating how a ticketless woman at Nashville International Airport boarded a flight headed for Los Angeles without going through TSA’s first checkpoint.

On Feb. 7, a traveler hopped over one of the security stanchions at Nashville International Airport, bypassing the first TSA checkpoint — where fliers are asked to show identification and a boarding pass — and blended back into the security line, Mark Howell, spokesperson for the southern region of the TSA, told KTLA 5.

This is the second time in four months that a traveler without a boarding pass has gotten on a plane headed for Los Angeles.

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In November, a man with Russian and Israeli passports boarded a plane in Denver with no ticket, visa or passport. He was sentenced to 93 days and ordered to pay a $2,174 fine this month.

A Russian man, Sergey Vladimirovich Ochigava, was found guilty of one count of being a stowaway on an aircraft. He faces a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison.

Jan. 26, 2024

In the latest incident, the female traveler was physically screened, along with their carry-on items, without incident at the Nashville airport before boarding the flight, said Lorie Dankers, TSA spokesperson for the western region.

“TSA and its airline partners are cooperating with the ongoing law enforcement investigation,” Dankers said.

The FBI said it responded to a report “of an individual who got on an American Airlines flight without a ticket and flew from Nashville to Los Angeles,” said Lourdes Arocho, public information officer for the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office.

“A woman in question was detained for questioning and our investigation is still ongoing,” Arocho said.

No one has been charged at this time.

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