Originally Posted by
rareair
Very OT but just as an anecdote:
I sometimes fly out of ALS with it's 3 times a day service on ZK to DEN.
It's a tiny rural outstation with maybe 10 passengers on a busy flight, but normally single figures.
Whilst the TSA do have a scanner for hand luggage, hold luggage is fingertip searched, in the check in area on a table in front of you, and swabs taken for analysis.
I don't know if ALS is unique in this respect but my gut feeling is there are probably a few other small towns with essential air service where things are still done this way.
I did think though that HVR probably isn't that far from you!
That's what used to happen at ACK (minus the swabs), now they don't do it in front of you so it may well be an x-ray machine (which won't have been cheap to get to ACK)