FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - 2012 Survey: How Effective is the Transportation Security Administration?
Old Aug 15, 2012, 6:04 am
  #46  
Tom Mcneal
 
Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: Liverpool, but MAN is my home airport. Because Liverpool Airport sucks (beyond the name John Lennon.."Above us only sky...")
Programs: DM
Posts: 3
My experience is that it is a place by place thing. I fly into the ATL a lot (from MAN, my home airport) and generally, it isn't as bad as I expect it to be. They yell a lot (which leads me to believe that some of the TSA eggheads believe that yelling English makes non-English speakers better understand English) but overall, it's not terrible. Thats how I would describe it: it tends not to be as bad as I expect it to be, particularly when you are faced with large crowds.

Some places are always terrible, in my opinion: JFK, EWR, PHL but those are not particularly good airports anyway. The TSA is simply maintaining the already low standards.

On the other hand, LAS has always been fine with me, and I inevitably fly through CVG, and they are great...largely because that airport is a ghost town these days. It's kind of sad.

On the international side, CDG is a joke, and so is the security there. the UK, which I love (and where I live) has airports so bad they are a national joke. How a world-class city like London could have such a collection of awful airports is beyond me. BRU is not bad....AMS is a great airport with at times awkward but not impolite security.

The worst in my experience (other than Baku, where I had to pay a bribe) are both Moscow airports, but they are bad at everything. The best is SIN, by far, but Changi is the best airport in the world, in my opinion. And China can be a little weird and very arbitrary.

Anyway...good airports tend to get security right, bad airports don't. That's how I see it. As to the efficacy of the whole thing, I just stopped thinking about that long ago. The TSA has an impossible task that they do for the most part reasonably well. The comparisons to Israel are just not reasonable to mel; Israel has such unfortunate security needs that it's difficult to draw many lessons there.
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