Originally Posted by TSAMGR
I checked it with the SOP and thats what it says. Bart will have to explain what he meant but I believe he was referring to passengers who strongly object to removing their shoes at secondary screening. Could there be a change in the SOP in the last few days? Definitely, it is a moving target.
TSAMGR,
No change to the SOP. I fat-fingered my post trying to clarify the issue regarding the walk-thru metal detector and neglected to cover the hand held metal detector. Mea culpa.
What I was attempting to address was that shoes don't necessarily have to come off automatically. A person can elect to wear them through the WTMD.
If the shoes alarm the hand held metal detector during secondary screening, they will have to be x-rayed because they obviously contain metal.
If the shoes do not alarm during secondary screening but meet the criteria for profiled shoes, then they will have to be examined with explosives detection technology. What I
meant to emphasize is that the passenger can keep the shoes on during
this process.
Even if the shoes come have to be removed for x-ray, the passenger can request to wait until the shoes are returned to put them back on before resuming the rest of the hand wanding procedure.
That was my whole point: you don't have to walk barefooted at the checkpoint nor do you have to stand on dirty floors during the hand wanding. TSA screeners can accomodate those who don't want to remove their shoes
up to a point such as I described above.
Sorry for the confusion.