FAA evacuates passenger terminals at four airports

SEATTLE, Washington (CNN) -- Passengers at airports in Seattle, Washington; Oakland, California; and Reno, Nevada, were evacuated and rescreened Saturday morning after a security agent discovered a metal detector at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport was not turned on, an FAA spokesman said.

In a separate incident, all three concourses at Memphis (Tennessee) International Airport were evacuated for about two hours Saturday afternoon because security guards thought a man who set off a metal detector left the passenger screening area without going through a second screening by hand.

In Seattle, a walk-through metal detector, located at a checkpoint run by Alaska Airlines, was discovered inoperative around 8:30 a.m. (11:30 a.m. EST). Alaska Airlines spokesman Jack Evans said he believed the machine was only off for 15 minutes.

The detector was reserved for "a very limited purpose" -- to check flight crews, passengers with no carry-on bags and "elite status" Alaska Airline frequent flier passengers, Evans said.

FAA spokesman Les Dorr said the agency couldn't confirm how many people might have gone through the checkpoint before the problem was discovered. Initially, the FAA cleared out passengers of one terminal but later expanded the evacuations for rescreening as a precaution, Dorr said. The FAA also ordered passengers on any flight that departed from Sea-Tac airport between 7 a.m. and 9:15 a.m. to be rescreened once they reached their destinations, he said.

That second precaution prompted the evacuation and rescreening of passengers in Oakland and Reno, because planes from Seattle had landed there before the rescreening process was in place. An airport spokesman said about 100 flights were affected by the incident.

"We've said we are deadly serious about any security breaches," Dorr said.

Eleven Alaska Airlines flights were preparing to depart at the time of the incident, and passengers who had boarded some three to five planes had to be pulled off for rescreening, Evans said. At least 1,300 Alaska Airlines passengers were affected by the incident, he said.

Meanwhile, in Memphis, airport officials evacuated the airport's three concourses and searched with bomb-sniffing dogs and police after security guards reported the possible security breach to airport police about 1 p.m. (2 p.m. EST), said Larry Cox of the Shelby County (Tennessee) Airport Authority.

Cox said Saturday was a relatively light travel day, with only about 1,000 people in the airport at the time. The man who guards suspected had breached security was located and no problems were found, he said.

By 2:45 p.m., passengers were allowed back into the concourses, he said.