Originally Posted by smartinez

I was on TK9 (IST-LAX) a few days ago, and my experience was similar to what's been reported already. They didn't take my power cords, spare batteries, or external hard drive. I saw them taking laptops and tablets, also cameras and even one giant playstation complete with controllers. They also make you turn on your devices at least once to show that they can power on.

The security at the gate starts with checking passports and a bag check. When I was there, there was a queue with three check stations - two staffed by men and one staffed by women. There were a lot of women on my flight, and many had children with them, so it was taking a long time. They were picking men out of the queue to go ahead of all the women. There were a couple of very vocal women who did not appreciate this. :-)

Quite a few people got a very thorough pat down as well as the bag check. I did not.

They write down how many things you have to check in and give that to the next check station. So once you are inside the gate area you sit until they call your name to do the bubble wrap on your items and give you a final claim check. If you do not have items you just go to the boarding lines. All that probably took an extra 40 minutes and it delayed takeoff about that much.

Once landed at LAX, they set up a table next to the baggage claim. People got in line and we waited about 30 minutes after bags starting arriving for one suitcase full of laptops to arrive. The security people then walked the line with a sheet of names of people who had items in that case. They said that for some reason, LAX security was hand checking every item, so the suitcases were delayed more than usual. They showed up one by one, with the final suitcase arriving nearly an hour later. People were upset, especially those with connections.

The airline personnel were as nice as could be expected. Both in Istanbul and LA, I saw outrageous behavior by passengers, from cutting lines and harassing the staff to outright yelling and rudeness. These people are just doing their jobs but people felt like lecturing them about how stupid this all was. There were other people who wanted to rearrange the process and make the staff do things that in their minds were more efficient. All this at top volume, of course.

People refused to sit down and wait - cutting lines, and pushing around the check in stations and insisting that they be served first. There were people insisting that they change the rules for them - in particular business class passengers. Hey, I was in business class too - but once you see that there is is one line, one process, you get over it, yes?

There were several people who just ignored the turn-in station at IST -- or "didn't hear" the instructions to sit down and wait -- which then required staff to go through the boarding lines (or maybe even onboard - I don't know) to find them and make them come back to the station to turn in their electronics. There were people who insisted that the initial gate check staff had taken their equipment, which made everyone run around looking for their stuff. But when they finally looked in their bags, there was the "missing" item. Literally, people lost their things in the space of 20 feet.

All in all the Turkish staff and the security staff at both airports did an amazing job and kept their cool. I was impressed with how they handled so many rude passengers and just kept calm and smiling. I can't even imagine dealing with that once, yet they are doing this every day. Could the process be improved? I'm sure - but hopefully this too shall pass and it will all just get back to normal.