Probe after dynamite stick found in student's luggage
United States and Argentine authorities were investigating how a stick of dynamite in a college student’s checked luggage ended up on a Houston-bound flight, one of seven security incidents that disrupted US flights in a day.
There was no indication terrorism was involved in any of the incidents, which caused two flights to be diverted, others to be delayed and passengers to be questioned.
The dynamite was discovered during a baggage search in an inspection station at Bush Intercontinental Airport shortly after Continental Airlines Flight 52 from Argentina landed early Friday.
Argentina’s chief of airport security police, Marcelo Sain, said authorities there were in contact with US officials as they opened their own probe into how the explosive got into the baggage.
The student, 21-year-old Howard McFarland Fish, was charged with carrying an explosive aboard an aircraft and was in the custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Houston Fire Department Assistant Chief Omero Longoria said Fish told authorities he worked in mining and often handled explosives.
Fish’s father, Howard, said he was certain his son, who bought the dynamite while visiting a silver mine in South America, intended no harm.
“It’s a 21-year-old kid not paying careful attention to the press and thinking it would be cool to have a piece of dynamite,” Howard Fish, of Old Lyme, Connecticut, said.
The US Attorney’s Office in Houston said he would appear before a federal magistrate Monday. Carrying an explosive aboard an aircraft carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.
The incident could have been disastrous and raises questions about security in overseas airports, said Bill Waldock, aviation safety professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Arizona, adding that dynamite can be unstable if it is old.
“You’re in a pressurised airplane, you get a detonation in the cargo hold, it could blow a hole in the plane big enough to bring it down,” he said.
In other incidents:
:: An American Airlines flight from England to Chicago was forced to land in Bangor, Maine, after federal officials “learned of a reported threat”, FBI spokeswoman Gail Marcinkiewicz said. Marcinkiewicz said no one was arrested, but declined to say if anyone from the flight out of Manchester was in custody.
:: A US Airways jet was diverted to Oklahoma City’s Will Rogers World Airport after a federal air marshal subdued a disruptive passenger who had pushed a flight attendant, the FBI said.
:: A Continental Airlines flight from Corpus Christi, Texas, to Bakersfield, California, was held in El Paso, one of its scheduled stops, after the crew discovered a missing panel in the lavatory, authorities said.
:: A utility knife was found on a vacant passenger seat of a US Airways flight that had travelled from Philadelphia to Bradley International Airport in Connecticut.
:: An Aer Lingus flight from New York to Dublin was evacuated Friday morning during a scheduled stopover in western Ireland following a bomb threat that turned out to be unfounded, officials said.
:: A United Airlines flight out of Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport was delayed because a small boy said something inappropriate, according to a government official speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information. “He didn’t want to fly,” the official said.
