The 9-year-old boy who stowed away on a Delta flight from Minneapolis to Las Vegas on Thursday passed through three security checkpoints at the airport without a boarding pass or identification, officials and an airline expert said Sunday.

The boy got through the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) checkpoint, past a Delta gate agent and didn’t get scrutinized by flight attendants before the plane took off, said Terry Trippler, owner of ThePlaneRules.com.

“I put it more on Delta than the TSA,” said Trippler, who said he stood next to the TSA checkpoint Saturday to talk to a TV news crew.

The boy blended in with a family traveling with children, and if an adult handed the TSA agent six boarding passes, it would be fairly easy to miss it if there were seven people, Trippler said.

“The kid’s smart,” Trippler said. “I’m going to give them [the TSA agent] a little break. The way I look at it is, Delta, this is a person getting on your flight. You make sure they’re all there. A lot of people want to come down on the TSA. I could see where it could happen. I could see where it could happen with Delta, too, but it really shouldn’t happen with Delta.”

Leslie Scott, a spokeswoman from Delta, said Sunday that the incident is under investigation. The airline “is working with the various authorities involved,” she said.

A TSA spokeswoman said the same thing Sunday.

The boy, who has not been identified, actually went to the airport both Wednesday and Thursday via light-rail, Metropolitan Airports Commission spokesman Pat Hogan said Sunday.

On Wednesday, he took a bag off the baggage carousel, went through TSA security and had lunch at a restaurant in the area that leads to the concourses. The boy told waitstaff at the restaurant that he had to use the restroom. Since there isn’t a restroom in the restaurant, the boy had to enter one of the concourses. He left the bag and his lunch bill behind and never returned, Hogan said.

The bag belonged to an arriving passenger. When the passenger arrived, airport personnel were waiting for him and returned the bag to him. The passenger went through the bag and reported that nothing was missing.

On Thursday, the boy was seen on surveillance video talking to a Delta agent at the flight gate, Hogan said. When that agent was busy, the boy walked down the jetway and onto the plane.

It’s unclear whether the boy chose the flight to Las Vegas at random or specifically wanted to get to the gambling mecca.

“It’s hard to piece anything together from his stories why he got on the flight and went to Las Vegas,” Hogan said.

The flight was not full and there were empty seats, Hogan said. The flight crew became suspicious midflight because the boy was not on their list of unattended minors and didn’t appear to be traveling with an adult.

Las Vegas police were notified and took the boy into protective custody when the flight landed. His parents were notified immediately but it’s not clear whether someone flew to Las Vegas to retrieve him or whether he was put on a flight back to Minneapolis.

Trippler said the incident “doesn’t bolster your confidence in the security system. “It’s not truly scary but it shows a situation where these people are human and they’re going to make mistakes.” He said the bigger message for passengers is if they see something, say something.

“It tells us passengers, always heads up,” Trippler said.

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