A Norwegian man has succeeded in boarding two separate flights at Munich Airport without a ticket, local police confirmed on 13 August. He eventually arrived at Stockholm, where airport staff intercepted the illegal flyer after raising suspicion because he immediately wanted to fly back to Munich.
The first trickery of the 39-year-old took place at the entrance of the airport, where passengers usually need to scan their ticket in order to access the premises. However, the man managed to squeeze through the access gate by standing close to another traveller, according to German newspaper Bild.
Once inside the airport, the man once again managed to escape controls at the gate itself. At the moment, it is not clear yet how he succeeded in doing this. Once aboard the flight to the German city of Hamburg, however, he got caught by the flight attendants. As the flight was fully booked and the man didn’t have a seat, it quickly became clear that he didn’t belong on the plane. He was then handed over to the police and charged but also immediately released.
Instead of recognizing his defeat, the Norwegian citizen decided to head back to the airport and try his luck once again. This time, he was not just able to enter the airport and board the plane but he even managed to fly all the way to Stockholm. The flight, Lufthansa’s LH2418, wasn’t fully booked and he thus succeeded in going unnoticed.
It is only once he landed in Sweden and immediately tried to get back on a plane to Munich that local airport personnel was alarmed and intercepted the flyer. He was arrested by Swedish police, who didn’t just notice that the man didn’t have a ticket on him but also found a 10-centimetre-long knife on him. However, according to police spokesman Sebastian Pinta, the man didn’t represent a threat to anyone.
Munich Airport spokesman Henner Euring has told pres that they are looking into how exactly the Norwegian managed to escape all controls, while the man is under police investigation for unlawful entry and transport fraud. “We are investigating how the passenger was able to bypass the automatic boarding pass check before the security check. The airline is also checking the boarding pass check at the boarding gates, where it is responsible for the check”, Euring said in a statement.
“I have never experienced this in my career as a civil servant. The airport must explain how this could have happened”, Andreas Roßkopf, the head of the police union in Germany told Bild. “Climate activists simply cut open fences, and now a passenger is flying through Europe without a ticket.”
Earlier this year, a female passenger managed to avoid all Nashville Airport (BNA) security and to make it onto an American Airlines flight without a ticket, boarding pass or identification documents. It was only during the 5-hour flight to Los Angeles that the attendants realised they were transporting an undocumented flyer aboard. Once landed, the stowaway passenger was handed over to law enforcement.
