10-Year-Old Boy Talks His Way Onto Flight Travel Families.com

10-Year-Old Boy Talks His Way Onto Flight

It appears as though he has a promising career as a used car salesman, but he’ll have to get out of juvenile detention first.

I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen the security tapes myself. After all, with all the post 9/11 security measures in place at airports around the world it would seem next to impossible for anyone to get onto an airplane without a boarding pass… right?

Apparently, not if you are 10-year-old Semaj Booker.

According to police, the Seattle boy successfully talked his way onto not one, but two flights last year and a few days ago he tried for No. 3. Only this time a savvy gate agent thwarted the boy’s plan.

Security tapes shot earlier this week (which have aired on various cable news shows and all over the Internet) show the boy passing through multiple metal detectors and TSA checkpoints at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Yet officials are baffled as to how the 10-year-old did so without having to show a boarding pass at each stop.

It wasn’t until Booker tried to board a Southwest Airlines flight bound for Sacramento, California that authorities questioned him. When asked about the whereabouts of his boarding pass, police say the boy pointed to a man in front of him and said, “I’m with him.” When airport officials found that to be false they called police.

Authorities confirmed the boy was reported missing by his mother and returned him to his family’s home a few hours later. According to police, the boy said he was trying to get to Dallas.

And he just might have succeeded had he run into the same gate agent that let him onto a flight in January 2007. Back then Booker lied his way onto a Southwest Airlines flight by saying his mother was already in the boarding area. Once he got past security he sweet-talked a gate agent and got onto the plane bound from Seattle to Phoenix. From there he talked his way onto another flight and flew to San Antonio before being discovered.

At that time, Booker’s mother told police that her son was unhappy living in Washington and wanted to be with his grandfather in Dallas. According to authorities, days before boarding those flights, Booker had stolen and crashed a car. A judge convicted him of car theft last July but said he wouldn’t have to go to juvenile detention if he stayed out of trouble for a year.

So much for that plan.

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