If the TSA wants to expand its role into domestic law enforcement, it might want to start by mastering the job it was created to do.
TSA Let A Passenger Board A Plane With A Meat Cleaver…Maybe Focus On That?!
A passenger departing Portland International Airport (PDX) managed to pass through a TSA security checkpoint with a meat cleaver in a carry-on bag and then boarded a Delta Air Lines flight to Salt Lake City (SLC) before the item was discovered. Only after the passenger was on the aircraft did airline staff identify the cleaver as a hazardous item, triggering a response that included notifying authorities and forcing passengers to deplane so the aircraft and passengers could be re-screened.
Let that sink in. This was not a questionable shampoo bottle or a toothpaste tube that was 0.2 ounces too large. This was a meat cleaver…a large bladed object designed to chop through bone. And it made it through security and onto a commercial aircraft.
To Delta’s credit, once the cleaver was discovered, it did what any airline would have to do in 2025: stop everything, get everyone off the plane, and re-screen. That is disruptive, expensive, and miserable for passengers, but it is also the only rational response once you’ve acknowledged a serious security lapse. After all the violence we’ve seen this week, including what Nick Reiner did to his parents with a knife, the response was wholly proportionate.
Now, TSA says it is “investigating” how this happened and whether additional training or corrective action is needed. Lovely, but the broader point remains: the TSA’s core mission is to keep dangerous items out of passenger cabins, and it failed at that mission in a way that should not be possible. It is frankly mind-boggling that more than two decades after its creation and despite billions in annual spending, the TSA still cannot do the basics correctly.
And this is where the irony becomes almost too rich. We have seen the TSA increasingly involved in activities far outside the narrow lane most travelers associate with “airport security.” The agency has shown enthusiasm for partnerships and data-sharing arrangements that have little to do with preventing weapons from reaching a plane. Apparently, the TSA has ample time to collaborate, collect info, share, and assist other federal agencies…
…But it somehow does not have enough time to keep an obvious weapon from passing the checkpoint.
Not Unexpected, Still Unacceptable
There is a certain bureaucratic muscle memory at play here. It is always easier to expand the mission than to perfect the fundamentals. It is always easier to say “we are working with our partners” than to admit that a basic screening process broke down. Yet the public does not experience TSA’s “partnerships.” The public experiences the checkpoint. And what the public should take away from this incident is not reassurance, but discomfort and alarm.
The simplest question is the most damning: if a meat cleaver can make it through screening and onto a plane, what else can?
Actually, we know.
Security, at its best, is boring, repetitive, and unglamorous. It is attention to detail and screening that works consistently, not selectively. If TSA wants public confidence, it should focus on the tangible threats that can actually harm people in a sealed aluminum tube at 35,000 feet.
CONCLUSION
I’m glad the meat cleaver was discovered before the flight departed. But it should never have reached the cabin in the first place.
And until the TSA proves it can reliably keep weapons out of passenger cabins, it is hard to take seriously the idea that it should be devoting energy to anything beyond its core mission…
> Read More: Immigration Agents Are Using Domestic Flight Passenger Data To Aid Deportations
image: TSA
I mean, those short ribs aren’t always as tender as you’d like them to be, so…
No one is surprised…Reminds me of the time a woman at SJU TSA couldn’t understand why the knife set (you know the cheap one with a block) she had purchased on her trip couldn’t go through the checkpoint. It WAS still in the box after all. 🙂
LOL. SJU is rough enough as it is. (Wish they had better lounges.)
I agree totally with your noting the whole “intelligence sharing” BS TSA is now doing to “support” the ICE or whatever mission. Just screen the people/luggage and let us go safely on our way….
Wait till you read their new plan to de-naturalize American citizens on whatever false pretenses they can come up with (see today’s NYTimes)… turns out Democrats aren’t citizens anymore… whoopsie. Handmaids Tale-level b.s.
When bottled water, free speech and anyone with brown skin becomes the enemy, apparently the meat cleaver becomes less important .
It’s atrocious that in late-2025 America that’s not really exaggerating anymore. *deep sigh*
It’s too bad it wasn’t a gun. Then they would have just held it at the airport for the passenger to collect on their return
A number of years ago, a pax forgot he was wearing a belt with a built in knife and it passed through TSA. While waiting for his connecting flight, he called his hometown radio station call-in show to report this. He didn’t make his connections as TSA was able to identify and arrest him. You made it through TSA with a cleaver and still hot caught?
I’d argue that the meat cleaver hype was security theater as well. With the post-911 understanding that cockpits need to be secured, a meat cleaver poses a physical harm threat to other passengers and crew, within limits, but not to the safety of the aircraft itself. The harm to the public would be similar to someone sneaking it on the bus to the airport: Yes, many people would be hurt but the venue itself wouldn’t matter much. Horror movies aside, a cleaver is actually an inferior weapon to a good, old fashioned steak knife.
Once it was discovered, simply escort the guy off the plane and go on. Again, what’s the point of deplaning? Any accomplice could have stashed a few other meat cleavers at other sections of the post-security checkpoint and then reboarded afterwards.
I suppose the idea behind airplane kabuki theater is many people have such hysteria about flying that to calm them down, we have to put bicycle helmets on the rest of us with every possible scary thing mitigated. Every spider captured and released but yet, like Rainman, they’d feel safer on a country two lane road in a 50 year old car than an airplane.
TSA: Too much Standing Around. Security? What a joke.
Was the pax an influencer who planned to make a butchering video at his seat?
How did airline staff discover the meat cleaver after the passenger boarded? Did he open his bag and show it to them? Did he use it in-flight to chop up his complimentary Biscoff cookie?
Airline staff aren’t typically in the business of inspecting passenger bags after they clear TSA, so this part of the story seems to be a bit of a plot hole.
How did airline staff discover the meat clever after the passenger boarded? Did the passenger take it out and show it to them? Did he take it out and use it to chop up his complimentary Biscoff cookie?
Airline staff aren’t typically in the business of inspecting passenger bags after they’ve already cleared TSA. So this part of the story seems to be a large gaping plot hole.
Shouldn’t they have de boarded all the flights in the terminal? If there was a security lapse why did it only effect the Delta flight?
I’m pretty sure the TSA didn’t “let” someone through with a weapon.
Enough with the clickbait headlines.