British boy, 11, foils security, flies to Rome

LONDON—It was just the sort of story Britain’s security chiefs did not want on the eve of the Olympic Games: an 11-year-old boy who managed to fly from Manchester, England, to Rome on Tuesday without a passport, a ticket or a boarding pass, simply by tagging along with families traveling with other children as they passed through airport security checks.

The boy, whom British news media identified as Liam Corcoran, passed without any documentation through five successive security controls on his way to the Rome-bound plane, according to embarrassed British officials. By the time he was discovered, he was halfway to Rome, and even then only after he told fellow passengers, concerned because he was sitting alone and seemed unhappy, that he was running away from home.

For Britain, which has had a bumpy countdown to the Olympic opening ceremony Friday night because of other security problems, the episode seemed like something out of BBC’s popular Olympic sitcom, “Twenty Twelve,” which chronicled—fictionally—an endless series of hapless miscues on the road to the Games.

In effect, he appeared to have shown that aviation security, essential to protecting the Olympics against possible terrorist attacks, was defenseless against a youngster randomly foiling a system that has been refashioned from the ground up since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

Liam was safely back in Manchester on Tuesday evening, met by his mother at the airport after completing the round-trip of 1,300 miles aboard the same aircraft he had boarded hours earlier. In Rome, he was held aboard the aircraft, operated by the budget airline Jet2.com, while he was questioned by Italian police and border officials, who cleared him for the return journey.

Airline officials said he told them that he ran away from his mother during a trip to a shopping center near the airport, then made his way to the aircraft by tucking in with other children as they passed with their parents through the successive airport controls.

In all, Liam passed through a passport and boarding pass check on entry to the airport’s departure area; a scanner area where all passengers and their hand luggage are individually screened; another passport and boarding pass check at the gate; a boarding pass check on entry to the aircraft; and a head count by cabin crew aboard the plane.