"AP - A man smuggled a monkey onto an airplane, stashing the fist-size primate under his hat until passengers spotted it perched on his ponytail, an airline official in New York said.

Passengers close to the man noticed the marmoset - which normally lives in forests and eats fruit and insects - emerge from underneath his hat during the flight from Fort Lauderdale, Florida to New York's LaGuardia airport, Spirit Airlines spokeswoman Alison Russell said. The man's journey had begun in Lima, Peru.

"Other passengers asked the man if he knew he had a monkey on him," Russell said.

The monkey spent the remainder of the flight in the man's seat and behaved well, said Russell. She did not know how the monkey skirted detection in Lima and during the man's several-hour layover in Fort Lauderdale."

Could have been a monkey bomb!

If this could happen in the security concious USA, does Suwannapumi Airport have any chance of stopping a more serious threat to people's safety?

Thoughts?

Probably one of the easier things to smuggle providing it sits quietly in a pocket or under a hat. Providing it never had any fillings in it's teeth ofcourse.

To me the security weak points of any airport are baggage handling and flight maintenance crews.

With the usual pathetic knee-jerk reactions to an incident like this US airports will probably soon have bunches of bananas hanging temptingly from the metal-detector frames.

With the security situation as tight as it is, it sometimes appears to me like they have the dogs at the wrong side of customs. One or two patrolling the huge general public areas & a whole barrage of the cute little things at the baggage collection point. If a terrorist had intentions of smuggling explosives onto a plane, wouldn't the dogs be be used at the point of entry for passengers boarding the aeroplane?

As to the monkey - could very well be carrying disease & therefore be a "biological time bomb".

Banana detectors could be the way to go, but why stop there. Could also hang a bunch of pornos from the metal detector frame to catch out all the sex tourists.

I've always thought one of the weakest points (security-wise) in any airport is the initial departure/check-in counter area.

Anyone could wander around in there with a large suitcase bomb and set it off. The death and destruction it could (would) cause would be just as effective as if they somehow managed to get a bomb on a plane. While there may be a couple hundred people on a plane, there could be a couple thousand people in the departure/check-in area. A bomb on a plane would (probably) take out just the plane, but a bomb in that area of the airport would shut the whole (passenger) terminal down for quite a period of time, causing major disruption and financial losses.

Imagine what the scene would have been like in the Glasgow airport if that truck had of actually exploded (instead of just burning for a bit).

As for the OP, people do get caught trying to smuggle various creatures all the time. I remember a story not to long ago where a woman was caught trying to smuggle some exotic fish, in little baggies strapped to her body ! Others have been caught trying to smuggle snakes in their carry-on bags.

One problem with this is of course, the possibility that the smuggled creature may have a disease (and not been vaccinated), or be an endangered species, etc. This guy probably didn't want to have his pet stuck in quarantine (and probably didn't have any veterinary paperwork to show that the animal had been properly vaccinated.

Don't start giving people ideas, Kerryd!!

Seriously, though, don't some airports (like Manila) stop anyone without a ticket going into the airport to meet or see off friends? Seems a good idea to me. Actually, considering my overall view of the security & safety aspect of the Phillipines, as a whole, I thought the airport seemed very secure.

I remember a story not to long ago where a woman was caught trying to smuggle some exotic fish, in little baggies strapped to her body ! Others have been caught trying to smuggle snakes in their carry-on bags.

God forbid if a pet King Cobra got loose on a flight into Calcutta.

Plane would possibly go down from the sudden, massive shift in CG as all the paaengers panick & get up and run to the opposite end of the plane.

I'de agree that the check in area could be a magnet for terrorists.

Think back to Fiumicino (Rome) where terrorists machine-gunned the check-in area - that was in the days of Palestinian terrorists (now revered government representatives)

Don't start giving people ideas, Kerryd!!

Seriously, though, don't some airports (like Manila) stop anyone without a ticket going into the airport to meet or see off friends? Seems a good idea to me. Actually, considering my overall view of the security & safety aspect of the Phillipines, as a whole, I thought the airport seemed very secure.

Well, I don't know...I managed to walk the wrong way through the airport in Penang and bypassed the security-check of my bags on mistake before checkin...

When importing my dog I had to walk through the customs-check to get money and then back in again, just smiled and muttered I needed to do it, and no-one said anything or reached for me.

So anyone that looks like they know what they are doing can go through security checks all the way up and until boarding the plane usually. And that doesn't even include the whole problem with the ground-crew being the most efficient way to get a bomb onboard a plane.

Some years ago I was on a Pan Am (remember them?) flight from JFK to Paris.

I marched up , plonked my bag on the little conveyor and put my ticket folder and passport on the counter.

The girl asked me where I was going. "Paris" says I.

She put a sticker on my ticket folder (she had not even opened it) and a tag on my bag and smiled at me.

When I mentioned a boarding card she directed me to another desk.

Some time later I was again taking a Pan Am flight (London - NY) but this time had to answer (as politely as I could) a whole series of banal questions posed by an intecllectually challenged individual in a blue blazer before I even approached the checkin desk.

There was a small incident in the interval.

One of their planes had gone kaboom over the Scottish village of Lockerbie.

Of course they knew with certainty that it was Libyans that had placed the bomb on that plane. Their security procedures were just SO watertight.

Seems now it wasn't Libyans at all though eh? But hey it's in the past so let's forget about it.....

I remember a story not to long ago where a woman was caught trying to smuggle some exotic fish, in little baggies strapped to her body ! Others have been caught trying to smuggle snakes in their carry-on bags.

God forbid if a pet King Cobra got loose on a flight into Calcutta.

That sounds like a good idea for a movie. It could be called "Cobras on a Plane"

I've always thought one of the weakest points (security-wise) in any airport is the initial departure/check-in counter area.

Anyone could wander around in there with a large suitcase bomb and set it off. The death and destruction it could (would) cause would be just as effective as if they somehow managed to get a bomb on a plane. While there may be a couple hundred people on a plane, there could be a couple thousand people in the departure/check-in area. A bomb on a plane would (probably) take out just the plane, but a bomb in that area of the airport would shut the whole (passenger) terminal down for quite a period of time, causing major disruption and financial losses.

Imagine what the scene would have been like in the Glasgow airport if that truck had of actually exploded (instead of just burning for a bit).

As for the OP, people do get caught trying to smuggle various creatures all the time. I remember a story not to long ago where a woman was caught trying to smuggle some exotic fish, in little baggies strapped to her body ! Others have been caught trying to smuggle snakes in their carry-on bags.

One problem with this is of course, the possibility that the smuggled creature may have a disease (and not been vaccinated), or be an endangered species, etc. This guy probably didn't want to have his pet stuck in quarantine (and probably didn't have any veterinary paperwork to show that the animal had been properly vaccinated.

There are plenty of places where they can kill a lot of people. I think the main reason to bomb an airplane is it is very good at creating fear to the main public. You can bomb a few airports but the fear might only spread within the area. But if a few airplanes blow off, the whole world panics. I guess.