Originally Posted by
LeoNYC10
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.
Some airlines do not let you get a boarding pass until you do an in-person check-in at the counter where you may be subject to the first round of screening / pre-screening. You cannot check your bags until you have your boarding pass right? That said, I have no clue if checked luggage is subject to additional searches based on different flights. It would be pretty easy to separate luggage for additional inspection based on destination. I have seen setups at various airports where checked luggage is subject to screening before being put on a conveyor belt to get sent off to wherever it goes. So I wouldn't immediately assume that checked baggage isn't getting as thorough of a check as carry-on baggage. And ya, TSA is security theater aka a joke. Not too mention they like getting handsy with children (I recently watched a TSA agent with an expression of joy molest a child, focusing his hands on the child's groin area for a while, disgusting).