Surveillance cameras at Newark Airport were not recording when a man walked into a secure area without being checked — a breach that set off near pandemonium and inconvenienced thousands of travelers, officials said yesterday.
The failure of the Port Authority-owned equipment forced Transportation Security Administration officials to get footage from Continental Airlines’ separate set of cameras, which delayed the reporting of Sunday’s incident to cops by about 90 minutes, sources said.
Once the breach was confirmed, Terminal C was shut down for nearly six hours. The man who got through was never found.
The Continental Airlines footage showed what appeared to be an Asian man wearing a tan jacket and pants, meeting with a female companion, who had a small suitcase, according to a police report.
The security breech was met with a strong response as at least three dozen PA cops flooded the scene.
PA officials and cops are furious they never were told their cameras had failed, sources said. Even though the PA owns them, it is the TSA’s responsibility to make sure they are functioning, officials said.
It is unclear how long the cameras were inoperable.
Ann Davis, a spokeswoman for the TSA, said the agency “accepts full responsibility for the breach.”
She said security at Terminal C would now be doubled, from one agent to two, at three exits.
The incident was the second major breech of security at an area airport in recent months. In August, The Post reported that security cameras at La Guardia Airport failed to capture even a single frame of a man who set off a panic by carrying a backpack with a bogus bomb.