Originally Posted by
psoque
Earlier this year, in April, my husband and I flew home to Indianapolis from Vienna, with a connection in Chicago O'Hare. My husband was "randomly selected" by a security person at Vienna airport before we boarded the Austrian Airlines VIE-ORD flight. He was walking to our departure gate, by himself (I was still trying to take care of the VAT refund, so he went to the gate ahead of me), and the security person decided to take him to a separate screening area, not visible from the concourse. It was good that he texted me before he was taken, otherwise I would have thought he was abducted.
It took about 45 minutes for the additional "random screening" to be completed on my husband. Because it was taking so long, I was getting worried. Since I did not know exactly where my husband was taken to, I asked one of the Austrian Airlines agent in the terminal if they know where my husband may have been taken. I was told that he is in a screening area just behind one of the walls, and that this is a "US thing, not an Austrian thing." The last comment struck me as very odd. I had no idea US TSA/CBP could be screening US bound passengers in Vienna. There were a few others on our flight who had to go through this procedure as well, and their families/travel companions were also very worried. My husband told me they asked him the very typical nonsense questions (Where are you going? How long we you in Austria? What did you do in Austria?), and his carry-on bags were re-screened both visually and with an x-ray machine. My husband asked one of the personnel (He thought they were all Austrian.) why is he being selected, and what is the purpose of this screening. He was told "I'm just doing what I'm told to do." My husband replied to that comment by saying "Do you remember what happened to 6 million Jews when people of your country just did what they were told to do?" Luckily, my husband did not get in trouble for saying this.
Anyways, has any of you been "randomly selected" for additional screening at Vienna Airport? How long has this been going on? Is this something new? Is this done by the Austrian government, or by US government? Why are they doing this? I wonder how often someone misses his/her flight in Vienna because of this? We were lucky because we got to the airport a lot sooner than typically necessary.
Yes, the US Government mandated it to be done also for OS flights from VIE-US. It’s a USG-required compliance measure the US requires of OS in this case at least. OS uses a private security contractor to do these airside secondary searches at VIE. I’ve never had it take 45 minutes — usually way, way less than that — but I also tend to be one of the last passengers to get to the gate more often than not and that can work to my advantage in saving time and with some/most of all the security contractors wanting to leave as soon as they’ve hit their time and/or list limit for the flight/bank of flights.