I mentioned this in another thread. I spoke with several the airport police officers at my local airport about the ban of lighters coming on Feb 15, 2004. They showed me an internal police memo that I probably shouldn’t have seen. It detailed the current thinking on the way this ban would be enforced, the penalties that will be expected, and the limitations of the current screening methods. The memo was organized more from the point of what the police should expect at the checkpoints, and not what TSA will actually do. However, based on my knowledge of how the two interact, I would put a great deal of faith in it. I will give a brief repeat of what I remember, none of which is restricted, and I discussed with them in public.
The memo stated the there were two pending proposals for what the rules will be. 1) No lighters and 2) No lighters or Matches. Then the memo went into the problems that will likely be forced upon the police as travelers passed through the checkpoint. Those problems in a nutshell are:
1) The sensitivity of the detectors is not currently set sufficiently high enough to detect the metal in a common lighter. If the sensitivity was set high enough to detect a common lighter, it would alarm on a larger percentage of passengers than can currently be handled. This sensitivity would cause alarms from watches, women’s jewelry, large amounts of dental work, the metal in jeans, and a variety of other permitted items that for various reasons the TSA has decided they do not want the WTMD to alarm for.
2) The ability of the screeners to accurately detect in the x-ray a single lighter among a variety of other images on the screener. The memo mentioned a test done in the past year, where the screeners at one checkpoint were given the task of identifying lighters in bags, and then all passengers leaving the checkpoint were asked if they smoked, and if they carried a lighter with them, by a non-TSA person. Needless to say the results, if correct don’t bode well for this type of accuracy.
3) If matches are banned as well, there is no non-intrusive time intensive method for detecting matches at a rate that is acceptable.
The memo then went on to detail the problems that officers should expect to see at the checkpoints.
1) significantly longer lines, leading to more passengers in the checkpoint lanes and more confrontations between passengers trying to make their flights. Local TSA estimates on line length increases. Current time averages are 60-120 passengers an hour per checkpoint. Estimates under lighter ban 20-40 an hour, under lighter and match ban 6-12 per hour (assuming b/n 5-10 min per pax)
2) Significantly more people in secondary, possibly to the point of forcing the temporary closing of checkpoints due to backlog.
3) More confrontations between screeners and passengers necessitating police involvement. BTW the memo indicated that if the confrontation becomes at all physical the police are going to be instructed to arrest the person on the spot.
4) Confrontations between other passengers as personal belongings are mixed between passengers during extensive bag searches. Memo indicated that table were to be set at the end of the screening lane where multiple complete bag searches would be done simultaneously.
The good news is that the police think the policy is stupid, and don't want it. The bad news lighters are banned by law so TSA has to enforce it to the same degree as they do knives and guns. Expect a lot of terminal dumps, especially in hubs or places with a high number of smokers in the population.