My wife just got back from a consulting trip out of state. It was the first time she has flown since 9-11. When she returned home she swore she will never fly again, even if it means missing out on some work. (This is a side line for her, extra money for the household) What she described has my blood pressure up a notch or two. First, the initial screening at the airline check-in was like something you would imagine at some third-world heck hole. The security screeners were rude and openly leering at every woman under the age of fifty. I guess we are so afraid of being un-PC, that anybody RESEMBLING one of the hi-jackers of 9-11 i.e. Arab or middle-eastern appearance, 18-40, male, are waved right through. My wife went through the initial screen at two airports, it was the same story. The ONLY people she saw picked for bag searches were women and one very elderly man. She saw one 80 year old women deliberately humiliated by a male screener who was having a laughing good time hold each and every pair of the poor womans underclothing up, in plain view of over 40 waiting passengers. If this was the luck of the draw, I would write it off as just gutter-minded employees, but out of 30+ passengers in front of my wife, the 5 selected for bag dumps were two nice looking young women, the 80 year old, a 70 or so year old woman, and an elderly man who was barely able to walk. While these "threats" were being dealt with, two male middle-eastern men were barely even questioned and went right through. The impression given was that only the persons being subjected to this "screening" were people who were most likely to be compliant or unlikely to object to their treatment.

It was worse at the second screening point going onto the passenger concourse. The employees were rude, but at least did not discriminate, forcing everybody to remove their shoes for examination. Every male going through was made to remove their belts to be examined. One elderly (surprise!) man who questioned why the belts were being removed was immediately hauled off by two national guardsmen to a side room for a strip search. Apparently anybody who questions ANY aspect of the security procedures, even if politely, is automatically assumed to be evading the security and subjected to a strip search.

There is more, but you get the picture. I guess I have a hard time understanding just how this thorough screening of the elderly and attractive young women is making our skies safe. Maybe some of you here can make better sense of this, cause I cannot.

BTW, a couple of tips. Take absolutely the minimum items with you on the plane. Remove your belt if you are a male and place it in your checked baggage (unless you are like me and need it to actually hold your pants up). Have your drivers lic. in your top shirt pocket and leave it there. You will be asked for it repeatedly, even by people who have already seen it a couple minutes before. Try to take no carry on bags if possible, the security people treat lap tops and other electronics like they were tossing around scrap wood. My wife saw one medical doctor's expensive new high line Fujitsu lap top literally broken in two by an idiot who thought it could be flipped shut holding the screen at the top edge. (the security people told the doctor they were not responsible for any damages during screening)

As long as the sheeple keep allowing themselves to be subjected to this crap it will continue and escalate.

I was in the travel industry for 12 years in the 80's and 90's.  As a frequent user of commercial air in the 90's I saw the decline then.  Passengers are nothing more than revenue generating cattle... period.  In fact, the airlines would probably far prefer cattle since they can't complain.  It's about bodies in the seats generating revenue and ONLY about that.

After I left the travel biz, I vowed to never set foot on another airline unless absolutely necessary.  After 9/11 I can imagine damn few situations that would force me to subject myself to the humiliation of being an airline passenger.  We fortunately have options as I and my better half love driving and we are both pilots.

In the past I would have said "vote with your wallets", but since the Feds seem more than willing to throw money at the airlines I can see them being accosted for more handouts if passenger revenues fell.

I have heard of females being groped at L.A. International(LAX). A terminal was shut down today because someone misplaced their backpack for 4 hours so the SWAT can inspect the parcel.

[url]
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-000019490mar17.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dcalifornia[/url]
Despite a recent spate of highly publicized evacuations at Los Angeles International Airport, a survey of the events over the last six months shows that the incidents are actually dwindling, even as more passengers are returning to the skies.................

[url]http://www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?id=101561[/url]
Experts Question 'Trade-Offs' in U.S. Security

Man I safer already with this smoke & mirror BS.

I only fly about 6 times a year. When I am near someone who is caught off guard and stunned by the the enormous amount of stupidity they find themselves mucking about through the security checkpoints, I just smile at them and in my best German accent I ask them, "Your papers please?"  Most of the time they get it and I hope it wakes people up. I have not seen the abuses of women but I have noticed that everyone subject to detailed search is NEVER of Arab descent.

I always get a chuckle when I see the minimum wage morons bending the file part of fingernail clippers off until it breaks. You can hear the sighs of relief for yards around when that evil implement of destruction is  removed from our midst.

All this BS security has done is to make me think about what mundane objects could be used as a weapon. Boy, I am so glad those terrorist aren't smart enough to think of such things.

-elliott
(your papers please?)

I have flown 10 flights with no problems with security since Sept. 11. I am a 32 year old male and I had been selected twice for a search. Just a search no bag dump and nothing was held up.  I would say approximately 70% of the screeners I have dealt with knew what they were doing.  One women in St. Louis had no idea what the hell she was doing or searching for.  
All of them have been professional and friendly.

I work for an airline and I hear about this kind of shit every day. I have never seen it and if I did I would make quite a sceen. I fly often as it is free for me. I have been in many cities since 911 and have never seen the stuff you are talking about.
I think it is happening but not as often as the media would have you think.
When we trade our freedoms for very good profesional security we have lost the war to the terrorists.

I think it depends on the airport a lot.  My brother got bumped so had to change flights, he's 34, wore a leather jacket & had a laptop.
He got everything but the anal probe.

Silly fellows...[IMG]http://216.40.198.77/mysmilies/s/contrib/aahmed/biggrin.gif[/IMG]

THE PROVISIONS OF THE EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY ACT HAVE BEEN MET IN THE SELECTION OF EMPLOYEES FOR THESE POSITIONS. [img]http://www.stopstart.fsnet.co.uk/smilie/deal.gif[/img]

QUESTIONS CONCERNING THIS PROCESS SHOULD BE BROUGHT TO THE ATTENTION OF THE LOCAL EEOC OFFICE FOR FURTHER HANDLING.

Stay tuned, National ID card is coming for you! [img]http://www.stopstart.fsnet.co.uk/smilie/yeees.gif[/img]

Before the female screener swept me with the wand she asked if it  was ok for her to do it or if I prefered a male.  I would prefer a woman run her hands over me and inside my waist band over a man.  Call me crazy.

I feel like we've been betrayed. No profiling, harassment, and now the democrats insist that foreigners without high school diplomas, or even the ability to speak english shouldn't be excluded from these jobs.   [whacko]

Should another 9-11 occur it may very well be because [b]they got jobs in airport security[/b]!

Complaints, people, complaints!

Every time some BS like this happens, send a complaint to the Company doing the screening, with a [b]cc:[/b] to the Airport Authority, the FAA, the airline you're using for that flight, the Hon. Norman Mineta, Secretary of Transporation, and the vilest and nastiest local news outfit in your area.

No one likes to receive cc'd complaints - you never know what the other recipients are going to do with theirs - trash 'em, or leadoff the evening news with a fistfull of similar complaints.

When the word came down from on high, that there would be [b]no racial profiling[/b] (thanks to 'Normal Norman' Mineta, former [u]Clinton[/u] Admin. official, now serving as Bush's Sec. of Trans) it became 'open season' on hot white chicks!

When I heard a mob of angry passengers had stormed a plane and drug off and killed the
Transporatation minister for the interminable delays at the airport, my spirits were bouyed for a few minutes, [u]until[/u] I heard that it had happened at the [u][b]Kabul Airport[/b][/u]!

Eric The(Drats!)Hun[>]:)]

True.  Sad but still true.

(If I have to wait in line four hours and be humiliated then I must be safe.  Idiots)

[soapbox]

I'm complaining to you. Take action Mr. Attorney! Threaten them with a lawsuit or something...  [smash]

The Nazis didn't discriminate either--they gassed and incinerated everyone with equal zeal.

Nashville to Orlando.  My laptop and a Garmin GPS in a backback.  You would have thought I was carrying a nerve gas cannister.  They could not understand what the GPS was and why I should be allowed to own such a thing.  

My mother works for Alaska Airlines, so I fly for free, which is the only reason I fly at all. A pilot told her about a Skymarshall who, for reasons no one can explain, got searched at one of the security check points. He showed them his identification, but they still asked him to go through a wand search which turned up his weapons as expected, but also his finger nail clippers which were promptly confiscated for the safety of all the passengers on the plane. Despite multiple complaints no discinplinary action was taken against any of the security personel (not only did they show a total lack of inteligence, but they also blew the marshall's cover to everyone at the check point). I sure as hell feel safer.

Kyle

To reply to a couple of questions above, I asked my wife for some more specifics about what went on at the airports. She flew from the Columbia, SC airport to Cincinatti, then back. She was on Delta, the USAir line is next to the Delta line, the worst abuses she saw were in the USAir line. They have no screened bag dump table for USAir and anything in your bags is openly seen by everybody waiting in line at Delta and USAir. She is quite adamant about how women were being treated and the humiliating treatment of the elderly woman.

She was apalled at the cavalier treatment of expensive items at the 2nd check, she felt like some of the security people wanted to break things, the more expensive, the better. She had been watching the doctors laptop in particular because she has a Fujitsu very similar to it. It had one screen hinge broken through and the other sprung.

I am glad it is not like this at every airport, but I wonder if air travel is staying low because of this treatment, more so than fear of terrorism?  

From today’s -3-18-02 - National Rev. Online -

SEEN AT THE AIRPORT [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
This from Corner reader Dave Quast: We're all familiar with the anecdotes about grandmothers from Des Moines being needlessly troubled by airline security employees. But what I saw yesterday should leave no doubt that Norman Mineta should be ridden out of DC on a rail.
As I was boarding a flight from Seattle to San Francisco, it was clear that the gate agent was merely counting, and sending every n-th person to be searched more thoroughly than the rest of us. The entire line was shocked and appalled when A 4 YEAR OLD BOY was selected as a target of their mindless procedure. He was scared, and his Dad was quite put out (understandably) as the security guy asked him to spread his arms and finagled his metal-detecting wand into his nooks and crannies. (Well, his nooks, anyway.)

Mike

I can only speak for one airport but the experience your wife had was an exception, not the rule.  As for what is searched and what is not, that is determined by the TSA, not the screeners because we cannot profile, so take that up with the Transportation Securtity Admin, not the minimum wage pogue working at the checkpoint (they are doing what they are told.)

Males only search males, and females only search females (federal law).  So if you wife (or any other female) was getting groped it must have been by a lesbian screener!  

FYI...your advice is right on, take as little as possible and everything is much easier....

Edited to add that kids and babies are checked becuase nobody thinks kids would ever bring something dangerous onto a plane, but an adult who wants to bring something onto a plane could make the kid bring it.  Think about it...

Airport security is a bad joke. The ?new rules? are not only demeaning to people, but they are executed with all of the flair of a plane hitting the towers.  It does nothing but make innocent people suspects, treated with all of the dignity of a leper. Going through a security checkpoint is guaranteed to make you feel cheap, soiled, and out right disgusted.  Doesn?t make you a bit angry that you have to prove you are not a threat?  When did using the john in the last 30 minutes of a flight become a security risk?  What purpose does that serve?  Why is no one asking the really hard question?  Is this necessary?  Does this security actually make you safer?  NOT does it make you feel safer, but are you actually safer?  Remember the guy with the ?explosives? in his shoe boarded in England and they are worse than we are.  Safer?

Airport screeners have a license to steal, and they have. [devil] The list of banned items is idiotic and insane.  Not only is there apparently no consistency to the rules, but there is no understanding of those rules. (Except for fingernail files)  Only the government and the so called ?security experts? could come up with such a list.    Now they will all be ?professional? because the federal government is involved. Senator Daschle said so [shock] (If you guys re-elect him then you deserve Gray Davis for governor) I hope this makes you feel safer?  There are far too many reports of abuses to just call them isolated incidents.  How long before bribes become a way of doing business.  They already have in Airport parking in Atlanta.  To get the cones moved you pay the attendant in cash and he will allow you to park. How long before you have to bribe your way on to an airplane so you can take your camera, golf clubs, rifles?  How about unused targets?  The system has far too many opportunities for abuses and they will occur.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=25418

What airport screeners can and cannot do is in this article, http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=25974 But we also know the government does not pay attention to the laws except as it is expedient for them to do so.  Just see this: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=26753

Airport security fails because it cannot do what it is supposed to do.  It is window dressing.  If someone wants the plane to crash you will not stop them.  All the security is designed to do one thing.  Desensitize the public for the intrusiveness of government.  The next step,  I can only guess that passengers will be subjected to background checks or worse.  How about state border checks.  How far does it go?  What are the limits?

The real solution is to allow the passangers to arm and in doing so take actual control of their safety. [uzi]

I refuse to fly with the current situation.  I will drive instead.  I have nothing to hide, but I have nothing to prove.  So when was the last time you carried weapon on board an aircraft?  The most lethal weapons are hands and feet. [smoke]