Suspicious Package at ISP [Archive]

T-Bird76

2005-12-28, 10:31 AM

This happened to me before at ISP back in 2003 right before New Years. Below is a report I wrote for Fred's site. Needless to say it was an interesting expirence.

With our country on Orange alert I'd thought I share a recent expirence at Islip MacArthur Airport that envoled an airport evacuation and a supposed bomb threat.

Wanting to spend New Years in Philly I decided to fly down verus sitting in the traffic on the Belt Parkway and the Turnpike. I flew American Eagle from ISP to BOS to PHL. Yes I know it sounds stupid to fly north only to go south but I had reasons to fly AA rather then US Airways Express. My story begins with my arrival at ISP.

I arrived at the airport about an hour and half before departure checked in with an agent who was totally confused why I was flying to Philly through Boston. Maybe she needs a lesson in the hub and spoke system. After checking in I proceed to security where I stripped down, with the other passengers so I wouldn’t set off the detector, you know, off comes the belt, shoes, jacket, and so forth. Getting through security I took a walk though the concourses to see what birds were in town. I was hesitant about taking pictures since ISP flips out if you look wrong at a plane. Anyway after walking around I grabbed a quick bite to eat and proceed to my gate.

Sitting there with my other fellow passengers about 20 minutes before boarding the police came down the concourse and told everybody to evacuate the airport immediately. Without questioning what was going on everyone got up and headed for the front of the terminal. After exiting the airport we were directed to the short term parking lot about 100 feet from the front of the terminal.

After everybody was out of the airport they proceed to put up police lines and took their patrol cars and blocked the entranceways and roadways to the terminal. After about 5 minutes I asked an officer what was going on. He told me a suspicious package was found and the bomb squad was enroute. So at that point I knew we were going to be there awhile. About 30 minutes into the ordeal a friend of mine who’s an ATC controller at the New York TRACON called me to ask if I was at the airport or if I left already. He told me that his manager was informed that an official bomb threat was called into the airport. His facility, which shares grounds with ISP, was also locked down.

Now about 50 minutes into this little adventure people started to ask how long it was going to be. The police ignored our inquires or just looked away or shrugged their shoulders. One officer did come out to inform us that they were bringing shuttle buses into the long-term parking lot for the elderly, women, and children to use. Now if you know the layout of ISP the long-term parking lot is a bit of distance for the elderly to walk especially in the cold and wind. At this point we hear these two large bangs. I got an officers attention and asked him what the noise was, he said they found a suspicious package and used police explosives to destroy it. Now even though I’m totally not afraid to fly that was a bit disconcerting. Being out in the cold now for over an hour and the package probably someone’s dirty underwear safely in pieces people started to yell at the police demanding to have the airport reopen. One person who identified themselves as a doctor demanded that wheel chairs be brought out from the terminal for the elderly to be taken to the buses to get warm. Needless to say they did nothing.

Now one thing that amazed me ISP was still landing planes but holding them on the taxiway, I would have though they would have held them in the air but I guess bringing them in uses less fuel.

Finally at an hour and half after this whole thing started they reopened the airport and then the real chaos began. If you didn’t play high school football you could forget about being first in line at the screening area, yes they rescreened everyone. Luckily I was about the tenth person in line. I’ll say one thing, the TSA did a ****ty job rescreening people, they pushed everyone through really quickly, talk about a security threat???

After getting back to my gate I noticed the plane wasn’t their and the flight wasn’t on the status board and nobody from American was a the gate for assistance. As my fellow passengers started to arrive at the gate everyone asked the same question, where’s the plane and the gate agent? We all had connections that we would miss and needed to be rebooked on other flights but without a gate agent it was a little tuff. Finally I asked a US Airways gate agent to call the American desk to see if they could come over, someone finally did came over. The agent rebooked me on a 10:30 flight from Boston to Philly but said if I get to Boston before 7:00 I should have them try to put me on the 7:30 US Airways flight. BTW the reason our plane wasn’t there was they redirected it to JFK. Finally after the plane got in from JFK we got ready to leave ISP. Talk about real short turn around, the minute the last passenger got off we got on. Our ERJ was on the ground at ISP for only 15 minutes!

The entire expirence was most interesting but could have been better organized. It seemed that the airlines at ISP were not ready for such an emergency.