Drunk man sneaks on runway of airport?

An intoxicated man sneaked onto the tarmac at Midway Airport over the weekend and forced the brief closing of a runway -- prompting an investigation into the security breach, city officials said Tuesday.

Mark Mechniek, 22, was charged with reckless conduct and trespassing to airport property after passing through a security gate at 55th and Laramie on Saturday afternoon, officials said.

Investigators think he walked or ran through the gate undetected while a vehicle was leaving. A Southwest Airlines pilot spotted Mechniek standing between two runways and alerted the control tower. Mechniek was arrested six minutes later at 4:23 p.m.

A city Aviation Department security officer posted at the gate during the breach has been placed on paid administrative leave pending an investigation, Abrams said. The officer has been on the job since July 2001.

A Southwest pilot said Mechniek would not have posed much of a threat to a Boeing 737 unless he was carrying a heavy weapon capable of shooting down an aircraft. The bigger threat was to Mechniek, the pilot said.

"The blast from the jet would blow you over like a leaf, especially if you were 20 to 30 feet away," he said.

Yeah, so what happened to that whole drastic increase in security/ policies/ process at airport? This story is comforting. Read the full article here.