4-Year-Old Latest No-Fly-List Addition

Told he couldn't board the plane because he was on a TSA terrorist No-Fly List, Edward Allen was upset.

"I don't want to be on the list," Allen said. "I want to fly and see my grandma."

You see, Edward Allen is four years old.

"Is this a joke?" Edward's mother, Sijollie Allen, asked Continental Airlines ticket agents when they denied her child boarding on December 21st, for a flight from Houston to New York.

Allen told a reporter for the Associated Press that she and her "terrorist" son were finally able to board, after much pleading and a call from the ticket counter to persons unknown. She assumed that it was a one-time error -- after all, what knucklehead would think a young boy was actually the wanted terrorist? -- but when they went to return home to Houston the day after Christmas, they got put through the wringer again.

Sijollie Allen says it was actually worse this time, although once again they were ultimately allowed to board. "You're lucky that we're letting you through," she says the Continental workers told her.

"I know the government is trying to protect because of the terrorist attacks, but common sense should play a role in it," Allen told AP.

The TSA -- hold on to your hats -- agrees. A TSA spokeswoman said that TSA instructs airlines to disregard name-matches on the No-Fly or Selectee lists, if the passenger is a child under 12 years old.

"We do not require ID for children because there are no children on the list," the TSA's Carrie Harmon said.

"If it's a child, ticket agents have the authority to immediately de-select them."

Nobody knows why the Continental agents didn't do that, but it's a pretty safe assumption that they would have done it if they had known it was OK.

After September 11, 2001, the TSA's countermeasures included the establishment of two lists against which passenger names must be checked, the No-Fly list, which is reserved for actual suspected terrorists, who are denied flight, and the Selectee list, for individuals with nebulous terrorist connections who are permitted to fly but subjected to additional security checks.

The lists have produced much aggravation and black humor; AP mentions previously-"listed" celebrities as Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), singer Yusuf Islam (formerly "Cat Stevens"), and actor David Nelson. Some of the problems come because the list phonetically matches names, yielding thousands of false positives; some come because any alias used by a terrorist is added to the list his actual name is on. 

That's what happened to Ted Kennedy; some terrorist used the alias T. Kennedy, and so the TSA banned the Senator too. The ironic thing is that "T" is not even Ted's initial; his given name is Edward. He was able to get himself delisted, but it wasn't easy -- even for a powerful Senator.

(At one time several members of the Aero-News staff were on the Selectee list, in an act of apparent retaliation for some of our previous reporting and editorializing on the TSA. Our names appear to have been removed also.)

Aero-News reported once on a case where immigration agents deporting a terrorist who had committed no crime in the USA but was an undesirable immigrant, had their terrorist "rescued" by TSA agents and nearly released, because, of course, he was on the No-Fly list. (It cost the ICE agents their Christmas holiday but they did get the guy out of the country, finally). 

If the list has led to the location or apprehension of any actual terrorists, the security people haven't mentioned it.

It has definitely kept some out of the country (occasionally by forcing airliners to divert, a method that's not very popular with the airlines or the other passengers).

But in this particular instance, it appears that the TSA policy had more scope for common sense than Continental's implementation of it. One hopes that Continental can get its ticket agents retrained... perhaps by next Christmas.

And Edward Allen can fly and see his grandma.

FMI: www.tsa.gov, www.continental.com