Originally Posted by
barbell
Or they'll just flat out lie (no, really) like I've seen them do several times at MSP. The main terminal there has 5 checkpoints available to passengers. Of those, 3 are completely NoS free. They will station employees to stand in front of the entrances to these obviously operational checkpoints and tell people that the lines at the NoS only checkpoints are faster. Of course, they slow the baggage screening at these NoS free checkpoints to a crawl so as to appear slower. The funny thing is, most people don't seem to buy it.
I would envision a similar situation at SNA where they stand in front of the entrances to A/B and aggressively direct people to the new concourse. It's how they roll.
SNA is a big business travel market, with most tourists still using LAX, so I don't think that will work as well on seasoned travelers. Before they expanded the checkpoints at SNA the lines in the mornings would be nearly an hour long (though now they are just a few minutes) and TSA would try to get people to go to the other checkpoint, and it worked on very few people.
That said, I have to say I don't know if it is the lack of NoS machines or what, but the SNA TSA station is one of the best I've dealt with in the US lately. They work fast, are fairly nice, and move people through quickly. When something is wrong, or different, it clearly stands out.