Originally Posted by
guflyer
My hope has been that this would mean that the TSA does not have money to purchase new body scanners for the airports that do not have them.
There is no reason that the cuts should result in any delays. The TSA could easily open up the metal detectors instead of using body scanners and could have the staff that normally performs gate checks, chat-downs, etc. open new lanes.
Unfortunately, the agency will likely try to make things painful for travelers. Any inconvenience caused will be artificial, and not a result of budget cuts, but a result of attempts to cause pain.
Think of this being a second show put on by the same people who put on the security theater.
Today I had a chat with a TSA supervisor at SMF...I was complaining about the excessive lines at the 3 open AITs, with 7,8+ people waiting- and the ONLY people getting the meagnetometer were employees.
He stated "Headquarters has told us 100% AIT". I asked if this was a written directive and he said yes.
Being the cynic, I'd say headquarters is tryng to jack up the appearances of lines... but hey, I'm a cynic.
They were also doing 'noob training', so many milling about in confusion- and my bag had to be rescanned due to a Dell Power Brick. (seriously)
So I opted out and was able to successfully pass with 6 ounces of black tar heroin on the bottom of my feet...
Anyone hearing/seeing the same as a policy? I did see this previously, but more along the lines of "we use AIT as primary", but not "headquarters says 100%"