A foreign tourist placed her luggage on a conveyor belt at the airport, and the introscope found a strange animal there. The find stunned the tourist and the security staff. The Sun reported on the incident.
The incident occurred at Norfolk International Airport in the state of Virginia (USA). Airport security officers, scanning the luggage, discovered an active animal on their screens. They recognized a cat in her, her contours were easily guessed. In those seconds, the staff could only guess why the traveler subjected the animal to such a test, because American airlines allow cats and other pets to be taken into the cabin, and therefore, they must be removed from the suitcase before the suitcase passes through the security scanner.
The situation, which attracted the attention of the public, was explained by the representative of the US Transportation Security Administration, Lisa Farbstein. She posted photos of the bag on social media and posted the following: “Just when you thought it was safe to take your beloved cat on a trip… This morning a traveler left her beloved cat in a travel bag at a checkpoint. Attention Pet Owners: Please do not send your pet through the x-ray machine as this is a ‘CatOstrophic’ mistake!’
In the comments, several people inquired about the condition of the pet, to which the employee replied: “Yes, everything is fine. The traveler and the cat were properly screened as soon as the officers saw the X-ray image.’
Farbstein explained that the passenger either did not know that it was necessary to remove the pet from the carry-on before going through the checkpoint, or she forgot to do it. After the incident, the Transportation Security Administration reiterated how tourists should travel with their pets: “The passenger must remove the pet from the carry-on bag and pass it through the walk-through metal detector or lead the pet through the metal detector on a leash.”
However, this is not the first time that a traveler left her four-legged friend in her suitcase to go through security scanners at an American airport. For example, a similar case happened last year: a dog was scanned by scanners at the Dane County Regional Airport in Wisconsin under similar circumstances. By the way, airline employees used to see kangaroos and ponies in airplane cabins.