Originally Posted by
mahohmei
Question, since I've never had to do this: if you are denied boarding at a connecting airport because you refuse a TSA gate search (or, for that matter, you simply missed the flight because you became too engulfed in a newspaper), does your checked luggage get pulled off the plane, and are you able to retrieve it at that airport?
I suspect that if you just missed the flight (
sleepeing, eating, left security then came back late, stuck in the lounge, etc), the bags would stay on the original flight. Believe positive-match is only for international routes.
If you refused the gate search and asked to be escorted out, and your boarding pass showed NCL (
no checked luggage), I'd go with you'd walk. If the BP showed checked luggage, I then suspect they'd pull the luggage, just for the novelty of the event (
someone actually saying "no").
Oddly, imo, this wouldn't be too disruptive in a flight
leaving a hub... a hub is usualy heading
towards a final destination, so it would delay only final arrival (
ok, unless it's a long delay, to a cruise departure location). What would
really be distruptive if it was a flight heading
towards a hub, in that if you lost an hour pulling bags, there'd be a lot of potentially missed connections.
That would be disruptive.
Yet... can you truly refuse a gate search? Seem to remember that the rule is, you can't stop a search once it's been initiated at the entry point. Even if you want to leave the entry point, they get to finish the search. Yet does that only apply at the entry point? Or does starting at the entry point mean that "search has initiated" through the entire sterile area, and not being able to exit even includes the gate search?
It would be interesting to see that one tested.