airport is considered a federal crime, so that would be why they were looking for him. got it. it s not clear to me whether the where the passenger exited. what s clear is that once it was discovered that he had that he or she had a gun, that they either exited they likely exited the airport, but again, that s not clear. as jim can tell you, earlier reports are early reports and you have to do an investigation to get more. got it. jay, stand by for me. if you can, control room, let s work on jay s audio because i want to make sure we re hearing him more clearly because at this point we re not. stand by for me, jay. jim, let s bring you back into the conversation. so, what we learned from jay, from this statement that he literally just got in his inbox, and then of course what he said took place, try and add that kind of math equation up that i set up there which is perplexing to me right now in that you have
who was on the phone with my colleague, alex, a little bit earlier. i want to bring him back into the conversation, jim, and as we learn more details about what is taking place in the airport there, i just kind of want to walk through, first and foremost, what we expect happened there on the ground there. we are learning from a producer that alex just interviewed that this was actually a passenger s gun. his bag was being searched at a tsa, from my understanding, what we learned from this producer and we re going to be getting that producer back on, and when they learned this gun was actually in the bag, it seems as if the passenger reached for the gun, which obviously was loaded, and it was an accidental discharge. correct me, jim, but you can t be walking through as a regular old passenger a loaded gun in your carryon. right. you re not allowed to carry a loaded gun into the cabin of an aircraft unless you re a, you know, federal agent or sky marshal or police officer who s authori
with the with that passenger. why that passenger would leave and where they ve gone, that s going to become a central area of focus as they try to get the airport put back together so that it can function. let me ask you, john, has there been a worry that there would be lapses in security at airports like atlanta hartsfield, especially when we are in the midst of this pandemic, we ve heard of obviously mandates going through when it comes to vaccines, folks not wanting to necessarily get vaccinated, leaving their jobs subsequently. we ve seen it across many industries. i know the tsa is also being required to receive those vaccinations. their deadline, i believe, is next week. is there a worry that there will be a lapse in security at airports like atlanta hartsfield ahead of holiday travel, especially when you see something like this go down? there is always an ongoing effort to keep security at the highest levels.
it was just a lot of panic, a lot of chaos, people ducking for cover, scrambling. there were long lines outside the airport. and it seems like the airport is still feeling the impacts of this incident. right now, authorities are saying that there are no injuries, but obviously, this is still an ongoing investigation. and as you mentioned earlier, yasmin, this is one of the busiest travel times of the year, more than 53 million people will be traveling during the thanksgiving holiday. that s a 13% increase from last year. but we re here at laguardia right now, and obviously, a much different scene. things have definitely started picking up ever since yesterday when people started to get a jump start on the thanksgiving holiday. but once again, this situation in atlanta, we have been notified that we the airport has been given the all clear, but still, they are feeling the impacts of this incident, and they are still seeing delays as a result.
seriously, as it should be. for someone to bring a firearm to the airport, unfortunately, it does happen. but for the actions of reaching for that gun, particularly in resulting with a discharge, and then disappearing, that elevates it to a new level, and this is going to take some time to sort through. it does indicate that tsa had located the gun. they knew that it was there and were in the process of confiscating it, so the tsa portion of the security system worked. but the actions from that point on, i think, will be studied and investigated in great depth but this is going to take a while to sort out. what does it take for an airport to go on lockdown, john, and how can airport officials, authorities, be so certain so