Airline Thieves!

[eandiver]

Long before TSA came onto the scene, there was a problem with theft by baggage handlers. This has been well-documented. I've seen closed-circuit footage on TV of baggage handlers carrying arm-fulls of booty to their car at the end of a shift. Travellers tried to mitigate this problem by using secure luggage, shrink-wrapping luggage and carrying expensive items in the passenger compartment. Now that passengers are no longer allowed to lock luggage and reduced carry-on weight limits are being enforced, it's open season again. Whether it's only TSA or whether baggage handlers are exploiting the new rules is immaterial. Passengers are getting screwed in the name of dubious improvements in security.

In the first month that I started doing checked baggage I found out dozens of ways to get in and out of locked bags without the owner ever knowing it was done. Samsonite hard bags, zippered padlocked bags, any type you can think of. I did it to resolve alarms with out damaging the bag but imagine the people who have been doing it for years to steal things.

Tip #1: All you people who have the cheap 3 digit combination locks, small, about 2" or 3" long made by samsonite and others.........thumb and fore finger gently pulling up the hasp while slowly turning the bottom number. When you feel a touch of resistance or hear a click go to the second and repeat then to the third number. Takes me less than 10 seconds to do it.

Tip#2: Zippered bags. Both pull tabs locked together, take a pen, knife, screwdriver whatever and push it through the zipper threads and open the bag. To close slide the locked zippers frome one end of the track to the other and the bag zips up.

I'm not telling anything secret but just trying to show how easy it is.

 

[gkndivebum]

I [...]and that they can refer you to secondary pretty much on a whim, with thick shoes (whether they alarm or not) being the most likely indicator.

Ah, that explains their fascination with my slippers (flip-flops).

 

[ianr33]

I was amuses in a sad sort of way coming through Miami a couple of years ago. Had to remove my Teva sandals and have the soles of my bare feet wanded. Maybe they thought I had surgically implanted WMD or something??

 

[DPJ]

The two key elements are that all jackets (including sportcoats and suitcoats) come off and go through the X-ray, and that they can refer you to secondary pretty much on a whim, with thick shoes (whether they alarm or not) being the most likely indicator.

I had on a piar of boat shoes. He was just on a trip, but the worst part is they had everyone in the place taking off shoes, no matter what they had on. I refuse to walk through the airport in my socks, or bare feet in this case since I was wearing boat shoes. The pat down and hand scan was truely a waste of time. I will continue to wear my shoes and they can do the secondary search.

 

[RonDawg]

I just came back from a six-country, two week European tour. My trip required using a total of 6 different airports in four different countries. You couldn't see more glaring differences between US airports and those in other countries, as well as within different US airports.

While I wouldn't necessarily single out TSA as being thieves (there are too many people with access to your bag at the airport), it is the utter inconsistency of the way they do things that is the most frustrating. Some airports require you to take off your shoes, others don't. Some require you to show ID with your boarding card, others don't. I guess that's the TSA's way of fighting terrorism, to confuse the heck out of the terrorists!

The requirement that you remove your jacket before going through x-ray is nothing new. I would use this opportunity to remove my watch, keys, and change and place them in my jacket pockets (they zip up) so I'm not fumbling with them at the machine. While I don't travel for my work, I do a lot travel for pleasure, so I've developed ways to streamline my turn at the x-ray machines.

When I was at London Heathrow yesterday morning, waiting to board my flight, I got randomly selected for an additional search. They asked me to remove my shoes, which were swabbed inside and out, and the swabs put into a machine that appears to detect for explosive residues. A very quick pat-down search was done by a male (females get a female to do the search), about the same as when a police officer does the same to a person on the street. My only carry-on was a plastic bag from the Paris Auto Show which I used to carry various gifts plus my camera bag. They looked into the camera bag but didn't check the rest of the contents. My name was then recorded onto a list of other passengers who got the Royal Treatment, I guess to refute claims that the searches were being done in a less-than-equal manner.

Aside from the ones who are outright abusing their authority, I don't blame individual TSA employees for problems with the system. They are only having to follow the rules that they may or may not agree with, made by bureaucrats in Washington with no clue how to run an agency that was hastily created in the ashes of 9/11. Anybody who's been in the military, or worked in law enforcement, will understand where I'm coming from here.

 

[lairdb]

While I wouldn't necessarily single out TSA as being thieves [...] it is the utter inconsistency of the way they do things that is the most frustrating. Some airports require you to take off your shoes, others don't. Some require you to show ID with your boarding card, others don't.

Aaargh. I find myself once again in the position of explaining (not defending) Thousands Standing Around.

Six airports in a week isn't that unusual for me; I think four in a day is the most I've ever hit, so I get to see the apparently different processes quite a bit. As a systems designer by profession, it's actually been fairly interesting to reverse-engineer-by-observed-behaviour, and I actually have yet to find an inconsistency.

Before everybody jumps all over that, remember that difference is not necessarily inconsistency. In diving, we have different equipment and different procedures for different environments for different situations -- so do they. Once you understand the differences, you can predict the behaviour with absolute certainty.

(This, by the way, is where comparisons with the EU fall apart -- flight frequency, number of airports, etc. are so different that comparison approaches irrationality. (IIRC, there are more commercial air traffic airports in Connecticut than there are in Europe.))

Here's a quick summary of what I believe I've reverse-engineered as it relates to the most glaring apparent inconsistencies.

• Shoes: Shoe removal is optional. Period. However, based on the judgement call of the staff, certain shoe characteristics will lead to secondary screening even if the magnetometer doesn't beep; this leads to some pre-magnetometer staff trying to find every possible way to imply that it's mandatory, because they already know that if you keep them on, you're going to secondary, beep or not.
  
  
• ID checks at the gate: this happens if an ID check and the requirement that you have a boarding pass is not in place at all security checkpoints. There are still some airports where an itinerary or e-ticket receipt is sufficient to pass the security checkpoint. Those airports will still require an ID-BP match at the gate.
  
  
• Jackets:

  The requirement that you remove your jacket before going through x-ray is nothing new.

  Actually, this one was formally changed last month. Until then, only "outerwear" had to be removed; suit jackets and sportcoats could be kept. Now, it's all jackets off. On the upside, the same change order said it was now OK to pile things on top of the laptop in the bucket -- it used to be that there couldn't be anything on top of the laptop, meaning many of us had to use two or even three buckets to get through.
  
  
• Showing BP: If the airport does not have a separate line and magnetometer for the pre-selectees, you will have to show your BP to the magnetometer monitor so they know whether you're a selectee or not. This is an interesting one, because there are some airports where there are multiple lines, and the selectees are directed to one in particular, but the non-selectees also use that line. In that situation, non-selectees in the other lines do not need to show their BP, but everyone in that line must. (Hint: avoid that line.)

I have no more access to TSA procedures than anybody else, but I see enough of them that I've reverse-engineered to reach the conclusions above, and as miserable as my experience often is and as useless as I think the TSA generally is, from a system design point of view it's actually fairly clean for accomodating all the different situations they have to encompass.

 

[Rick_G]

I guess that's the TSA's way of fighting terrorism, to confuse the heck out of the terrorists!

Finally an answer that makes sense.

Yours wasn't so bad either lairdb

 

[RonDawg]

Shoes: Shoe removal is optional. Period. However, based on the judgement call of the staff, certain shoe characteristics will lead to secondary screening even if the magnetometer doesn't beep; this leads to some pre-magnetometer staff trying to find every possible way to imply that it's mandatory, because they already know that if you keep them on, you're going to secondary, beep or not.

When the TSA guy/girl is ordering you to remove your shoes, I don't consider that optional. I guess I could probably push the issue, but then again I am trying to catch a flight.

I can understand a recommendation to remove shoes if it is likely to set off the machine, such as a hiking style boot with metal lace hooks. But at Hilo airport I was told I had to remove my sandals that had absolutely no metal in them. However a few days earlier Honolulu allowed me to keep those exact same sandals on. It's this sort of inconsistency that I'm talking about.

Again I am not blaming the individual TSA employees. They are simply being told what to do by people who haven't a clue.

ID checks at the gate: this happens if an ID check and the requirement that you have a boarding pass is not in place at all security checkpoints. There are still some airports where an itinerary or e-ticket receipt is sufficient to pass the security checkpoint. Those airports will still require an ID-BP match at the gate.

Nope. When I flew out of Seattle-Tacoma last June I didn't have to show my ID once between the front door and the aircraft. I printed out my boarding pass at a United Airlines Easy Check-in terminal using the credit card I used to make the internet booking. That boarding pass got me through the security checkpoint and also onto the plane. NOT ONCE WAS I ASKED TO PRODUCE IDENTIFICATION, so if I dropped that boarding pass in the bathroom, now some total stranger can pretend to be me and while the theft will likely be reported before boarding starts, he can at least get into the "sterile" area and disappear and do who knows what. Same with Boston-Logan.

OTOH LAX made you produce ID up until very recently, as late as last June.

It wasn't mentioned in my post but my recent six airport tour isn't my only flight experience this year. I went to Seattle in June, Hawaii (both Honolulu and Hilo) in April, and Boston in January (BRRR!). In 2003 I visited London and Washington as well as Boston and Seattle. 2002 was London, Seattle, and Washington (via Baltimore). So while I'm not a business traveller I do see quite a bit of air travel for someone who only does it for pleasure.

 

[Nomaster]

Yes the security is overreation and a joke - it wont stop anyone determined.
...

At this rate before long passengers boarding an aircraft will be stripped, handcuffed and tied to the seat just in case.

I stopped myself from responding at length because I believe the "truth" behind the ruse of airport security is too hot for a non-political board.
The "truth", as I believe it, is non-partisan.
The smallest part of this truth and the least incindiary to say is, it is to quiet the fears of the fearful and skittish, at least the ones who can swallow the ruse.
"Safety" at any cost? The cost is too great.

Tom

 

[Nomaster]

My biggest problem is the inconsistency that I see about the whole screening process, and the lack of care on the part of some of the screeners about how someone's belongings are treated.

We've not had anything go missing from our checked luggage, but it has
been tossed more times than I can count. A small suggestion: if you unpack
it to check the contents, at least have the courtesy to pack it back like you
found it.

I'm told that when government/cops "toss" a house, they don't pay for the maid service. Same mentality. These guys are just government goons, except probably trained much less and paid much much less.
So, maybe mentality is the wrong word; wish I had my thesaurus.

Tom