As a result of this incident the agency has announced that only infants will be permitted to fly for the foreseeable future, because at least for the most part it has that threat under control.
It expects to have its personnel trained up to toddler-foiling levels by 2017.
Earlier this week, a nine-year-old boy, acting without either adult help or a ticket, managed to get past our crack airport-security teams and board a flight from Minneapolis to Las Vegas. At last report, the TSA was "still trying to figure out how he did it."
According to this report, airport officials who reviewed security-camera footage do not believe the little dickens had a boarding pass, although there are no details as to why they think this. "He had to pass three levels of security" to get on the plane, noted one expert (although you don't have to be too expert to know that). "You have the TSA, the gate agents, and the flight crew, and a child comes through without even a seat assignment." Flight attendants did come to suspect something was up during the flight, and the boy was returned to his family in Minneapolis.
This is at least the second nine-year-old to evade the TSA successfully despite the $60+ billion that we have spent on that agency over the past decade. According to the CNN report, in 2007 one flew from Seattle to Phoenix to San Antonio before being found out, although, to be fair to the TSA, that nine-year-old did somehow get a boarding pass (under a different name).
Strangely, there is no mention of this incident on the TSA's blog, although there is a note saying that it won't be "actively managed" during the current budget impasse. The blog, at least, normally is.