Security Breach at Newark Liberty International Airport Prompts Lockdown

At approximately 7:00PM on Sunday evening, travel plans for passengers traveling through Newark Liberty International Airport’s Terminal C, took a turn for the worse.  A man entered a prohibited exit to C3 which is a secured hallway: this prompted an immediate evacuation of the terminal. This was of course after United States Customs and Border Protection agents detained the man at gate 121, and handed him over to the Port Authority Police Department. The suspect was then transported to Beth Israel Hospital for further evaluation.

Passengers suffered miserably from just one man going through an exit door leading to a secured hallway.  All United customers traveling through Terminal C that evening had to be placed through airport security again.  This was of course following the Port Authority sweeping the terminal and hallway with K-9s per protocol.

Despite the evening’s travel plans being hit with a crosswind passengers appeared okay.  This is considering wait times were reported by the TSA at 7:50PM EDT to be over thirty-one minutes for both Terminal C/3 and Terminal C/1.  Both of these terminals are exclusive to United mainline and United Express flights.  Even after what seemed to be an endless struggle Twitter user @juliesauch shared with us that there were a lot of people still waiting to get through security. This validates our research into TSA wait times.  She went on to explain that the whole process took around an hour.  With reports from the Port Authority claiming that the whole scenario began at 6:57PM EDT and concluded at 8:21PM EDT Julie, our eyewitness wasn’t far off.

When frustrated passengers were finally able to get through security and back to their gates. they found about two dozen delays according to United Airlines spokeswoman, Karen May.  Luckily, the majority of the delays seemed to only last an hour.

As always, the AirlineGeeks team urges all passengers to be mindful that flights are not the only things to arrive at airports.    This issue displayed the fact that just one person could inconvenience an entire terminal worth of passengers.

Back in #EWR terminal C, but there are a LOT of people still waiting #newarkairport @TSA pic.twitter.com/PTUlE1CLYv

— Julie Sauchelli (@juliesauch) August 31, 2015

@ClassyMalick @AirlineGeeks they evacuated #ewr terminal C after a man ran through security. Whole process has taken about 1 hr

— Julie Sauchelli (@juliesauch) August 31, 2015

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