Woman caught trying to take loaded gun onto flight

Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers in America stopped a woman from boarding a New Jersey-bound plane with a loaded handgun on Thursday.

The passenger was found with a .380-caliber handgun loaded with six rounds of ammunition, including one in the chamber, at the Norfolk International Airport checkpoint.

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Lisa Farbstein, TSA spokeswoman, told Pilot Online that the firearm was detected as it passed along the conveyor belt.

Norfolk Airport Authority Police were immediately contacted and the gun was confiscated. The woman was issued a citation on a state weapons charge.

AP reports that she was then released and allowed to board her flight.

Airport operations were not affected by the incident.

In 2014, a man with a loaded gun was allowed to board a flight from Phoenix, Arizona, en route to London Heathrow.

The passenger, who, it later emerged, had a criminal record, was picked up when trying to board a connecting flight to Paris.

His weapon was missed by a TSA security official in America, who also missed another passenger's flick-knife on a different flight on the same day (22 June).

William Joseph Richardson, 34, was going through screening at Heathrow Airport to a board a BA flight to Paris when his loaded Glock handgun was discovered.

London Special Police confiscated the firearm and took Richardson in for questioning.