What Mats is saying is the TSA's emphasis on turning up the sensitivity of metal detectors so that underwire bras and pants zippers set it off defeats the purpose of the metal detector: A prelim screen of the pax so you know who really needs more scrutiny.

If the WTMD is set so sensitive that it alarms on 90% of the pax, even after they completely divest of all divestable metal, then you shouldn't bother with it, since you are going to wand those 90% anyway.

OTOH, if it is returned to a more rational setting, you may miss an occasional pocketknife but the lines will again move; the lines will look less like former USSR bread lines and more like the USA.

Of course, individual screeners can't do anything about this - the Jackass Loy must change.

Other changes that must occur:

1. Alarms at the WTMD need not get the full treatment - that rule is a silly Mineta holdover from September 13, 2001. It was infantile then, and is infantile now. Just ask the pax to empty pockets and walk thru again. Again - Jackass Loy needs to change.

2. Norm Mineta's obsession with small pocketknives must also end. Millions of people carry them and a juvenile rule that the TSA will ask you to "surrender" them is assinine. Just like the rule discussed above. Yet again, Jackass Loy.

3. TSA screeners should remember that most people they encounter each day are frequent flyers and tire of the screeners' assumption that everyone in the line is a once-a-year vacationer on their way to MCO. Frequent flyers probably constitute 50% to 75% of your pax load each day (unless you are based at MCO or another vacation destination). Most of the public only flies occasionally - but most flyers on any given day are in the air frequently. Why does this matter? Stop yelling about emptying pockets and laptops. Just leave the pax alone.

There are more, but these are good starters.

[This message has been edited by FWAAA (edited 09-03-2003).]