Live Ammo Found in Seat Back Pocket of Southwest Flight

(Nov. 24) -- In preparation for landing, please bring your seat backs and tray tables to the upright position, stow away all carry-on luggage, and remove any live ammunition from the seat back pocket in front of you.

In the midst of a national freak out over TSA "we might touch your junk" pat-downs, somehow a child on a Southwest flight to Phoenix knocked a loaded gun magazine from the seat pocket in front of him, according to Gregg Canes, a CNN photographer who was on the flight.

CNN reports:

[Canes] said that after the plane had landed, a child behind them, who had been seated on his mother's lap, was crawling across the other seats on the row toward the window when his foot knocked something onto the floor. A flight attendant picked it up, he said, and he could see it was a gun magazine.

The ammo apparently belonged to a federal law enforcement officer who had been on an earlier flight on the same plane.

"The item was immediately turned over to the crew working the flight, who called in the local authorities to handle the investigation," Southwest Airlines said in a statement. "The passengers who were remaining on that flight were rescreened and the plane was thoroughly inspected before returning to service."

Southwest said the officer had properly declared the ammunition before boarding the plane, so he or she (the officer in question remains unnamed) almost did everything right. But, when the magazine you forget in your seat back pocket is a gun magazine -- and not, say, Ladies' Home Journal -- you earn yourself a ticket to "remedial training" with the TSA, which may or may not involve a rigorous pat-down.

Read more at CNN.

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