I was waiting in the security line around 6 AM in CLT on December 10 (sorry for the delay in posting this, I've been busy). I believe CLT has one of those motion detectors at the exit that alarm if someone walks through it the wrong way. In any event, there's always supposed to be a TSA screener at the other end to turn someone around who tries to enter through the exit. This was the entrance closest to the A concourse.
I saw a man with a rolling carry-on (actually three small items tied together on a small dolly) walk right through the exit. I took note of the time (6:10 AM) and wondered how long it would take for him to come back. He never did come back!
What's worse is that there was a TSA screener who had just walked through the exit (the right way), and when she saw this man go through the wrong way, she stopped and turned around, looked in his direction with a puzzled look on her face, and then continued where she was going.
The man wasn't wearning any kind of law enforcement uniform (looked like a regular businessman). I thought maybe he was a sky marshal, but then everyone is supposedly to through the security checkpoint, right?
It was another five minutes before I proceeded through the security checkpoint, and I never did see him come back. While I was waiting, I was just thinking about how pointless the whole thing is when people can just walk through the exit without any security at all, especially with three carry-ons that could carry a sizeable amount of weaponry or bombs.
I considered pointing this out to a TSA screener (the nearest one being the one who looks at people's boarding passes), but since an airport evacuation of CLT on a Friday morning would cause massive delays, I decided to assume he was simply in a big hurry for a trip and didn't want to wait in the line. Since it's now been over a week and nothing has happened, my intuition was correct.
The only two plausible explanations I can think of is that 1) there is no motion detector, or it's broken, and what the man did was sneak through the exit by waiting (or just being lucky) when the exit guard was not looking. Or, 2) the exit guard did see him, and that's why the exiting TSA screener I observed didn't stop him herself, but then why did the exit guard let him go? bribery?
Anyway, it is pretty ****ing stupid to pat down a two year old when you could just walk through the exit and bypass the whole thing.
