Originally Posted by
Mats
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Here's my guess: contract security agents are all over the airport: on the apron, guarding entrances to SIDA zones, guarding aircraft. I'm guessing that it is these same agents who are assigned to the Delta flight at JFK. In my experience, they're incredibly friendly. The same in Tel Aviv: cheerful, hospitable, no hassle.
Now we are getting somewhere. You are probably 100% on the money here. So these guys are doing something else most of the time and are only utilized once a day for the Delta flight to Israel. The other thing is that these guys only check the hand and carry on luggage, so they rely fully on TSA to screen the cargo and checked in luggage and find that sufficient.
In other words, the concern is that someone will get something between the TSA check at the airport and the gate.
I would feel better, personally, if they talked to every person at the gate like they do at El Al, and carefully screened those that deemed possibly suspicious. The X-Ray check seemed similar to the one TSA does, and we all know TSA misses a lot of things based on their own audits.