Originally Posted by
RatherBeOnATrain
We don't know what their definition of a "test" is.
A test could be a red team of 10 deploying to an airport and each team member passing thru the checkpoint 10 or 20 times over 2 or 3 days (to check different shifts of TSOs).
My guess is that a "test" refers to an airport, not to one person passing thru a checkpoint once.
I certainly hope you're right. The idea that 70 individuals conducting a single pass-through each, is anything resembling a useful test sampling, whether it was spread out over all of the airports in the country or just a few, is ludicrous.
I tend to believe that each of the 70 tests involved multiple individuals transiting checkpoints multiple times at a particular airport over multiple days. If that is so, then the tests would really represent 70 airports.
While 70 airports is still not all of the hundreds in the US, it's certainly more than enough to include all of the major big-city hubs like BOS, LGA, DCA, ORD, DEN, LAX, SEA, etc, and quite a few of the medium and smaller size airports, as well. It's enough to provide a truly representative sample and get a reasonable picture of the state of TSA competence (or lack thereof) nation-wide.