Practical Travel Safety Issues - Scanner without adjacent WTMD

So I noticed my last trip through SFO terminal 1, that there was no WTMD adjacent to the scanner I opted out of. In fact this was on the only lane operating.

It's been established that for families with infants, they always to open a WTMD. Does this mean automatic patdown for infant in this case? I didn't stick around to see if there would be any infants try to go through.

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So I noticed my last trip through SFO terminal 1, that there was no WTMD adjacent to the scanner I opted out of. In fact this was on the only lane operating.

It's been established that for families with infants, they always to open a WTMD. Does this mean automatic patdown for infant in this case? I didn't stick around to see if there would be any infants try to go through.

Was this the US Airways/Southwest/Alaska/AirTran terminal? If so, I noticed the same thing this morning. As of at most a couple of months ago, that scanner did have a WTMD next to it; I have no idea where it went. In the morning, they normally have the left-most WTMD running and the center WTMD/MMW pair, so it's really easy to self-select an opt-out. This morning, everyone in that group was being sent to the MMW.

There is a separate room off to the right that I've never been in, and from the looks of it this morning it was running at least one MMW and WTMD. I'm not sure who gets diverted there -- premium line, family, overflow, etc. I've generally just headed for the regular line, as it moves quickly and makes it easy to select the WTMD. Hindsight being 20/20, I should have taken my chances over there, but I was on autopilot, as that left-hand WTMD was always open. Next time, I'll have to check out the mystery room.

At least the staff was super professional and very courteous when handling my opt-out; that's one positive thing I can say for the security contractors at SFO.

Ottermatic

Was this the US Airways/Southwest/Alaska/AirTran terminal? If so, I noticed the same thing this morning. As of at most a couple of months ago, that scanner did have a WTMD next to it; I have no idea where it went. In the morning, they normally have the left-most WTMD running and the center WTMD/MMW pair, so it's really easy to self-select an opt-out. This morning, everyone in that group was being sent to the MMW.


Yes, US Airways terminal. Your experience exactly mirrors mine. Last time through there was an adjacent WTMD. Not so this time around, there was no WTMD operating in the big area at all, hence my question about how infants might be handled in this area.


There is a separate room off to the right that I've never been in, and from the looks of it this morning it was running at least one MMW and WTMD. I'm not sure who gets diverted there -- premium line, family, overflow, etc. I've generally just headed for the regular line, as it moves quickly and makes it easy to select the WTMD. Hindsight being 20/20, I should have taken my chances over there, but I was on autopilot, as that left-hand WTMD was always open. Next time, I'll have to check out the mystery room.

Premium line feeds to the big area. Like you I'll also check out the little room next time around.


At least the staff was super professional and very courteous when handling my opt-out; that's one positive thing I can say for the security contractors at SFO.

Ottermatic

Same experience. When I told the scanner feeder I was opting out, he said "sure no problem, wait right here and watch your belongings." Patdown was of the 2 minute variety.

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

That extra room behind the restaurant is an overflow room. When I was through SFO a few months ago it was one WTMD and one bag X-ray machine.

I've seen it open a few times, only in the real busy mornings though.

If they're only running one lane with the MMW, lines must move horrifically slow. Even pre-MMW, they'd always run at least two Bag scanners and WTMDs.