Originally Posted by Wiirachay
Makes sense to me; however, I think passengers who send their bags locked should be warned by TSA or airline personnel that: they will be paged to open their bags; and if they don't show up, the lock will be broken, or they simply won't be allowed to board. Or, their boarding passes could be held until TSA notifies that the bag has been cleared, and the pax can proceed to security checkpoint. Paging is not an airport-wide published option!!!
I'm extremely disturbed and disgusted that this concept can't be implemented throughout the country for AT LEAST internationally-bound passengers! TSA at least needs to understand that internationally-bound pax check in at least one hour prior to departure and should be considerate of the inherent fact that the bag and its owner are leaving US soil and into the jurisdiction of another government!!! (Bag theft is common in India and the Philippines. That's why many Indians and Filipinos lock their bags using bag locks or use hardshells. In Singapore and the Philippines, there's the death penalty for drug trafficking.)
May I ask what airport you work in? In DTW, airline agents ask if your bags are unlocked, even for internationally-bound flights. An agent told my father (bound for BKK!!!) to remove his lock because his bag was selected to be sent to the X-ray machine behind-the-scenes. Having checked in 3 hours in advance, he was rather pissed that he wasn't given the option to be paged or at least be given the opportunity to somehow get his lock back on his bag after TSA screening. However, a TSA screener behind the agent that does closed-bag ETD screening took sympathy on my father and placed one of those disposable TSA tie-seals (those are now a thing of the past) and explained to him that the seal won't be broken if the bag isn't searched, and a new TSA seal will be placed should the bag need to be inspected. He seemed less ticked but still annoyed at the fact that TSA could just ruffle through his stuff behind his back.
Next time I'm going to challenge DTW airline agents, and ask why I can't be paged, especially if I check in 2-3 hours in advance...
I'd like to see the following TSA signs in the future:
* Screening in lobby: "Baggage locked? Please wait until your baggage has been cleared. Failure to wait may result in broken locks should a physical inspection be required."
* Screening behind-the-scenes: "Baggage locked? Please notify your airline upon checking in. Failure to notify may result in broken locks should a physical inspection be required."
Cheers, Bart. ^
- Pat
I believe we follow the correct procedures in San Antonio International Airport and can only tell you how we do it here. At my terminal, three of our four baggage pods are located inside the lobby. We ask the passenger if he or she has any 35mm film, matches or lighters inside the bag, and if the bag is locked. If the bag is locked, we ask them to wait until after we've cleared their bag. We do have signs posted with this same information. According to our SOP, we do not have to ask these questions if there are signs already posted with the same information; however, we do it as a customer service courtesy. If the bag is unlocked but the passenger wants to lock it, we have them lock it before screening. Experience shows that it's better to have people unlock their bags as the exception rather than have them relock them.
There are a couple flaws with this process. We get a lot of bags from curbside check-in, and not all skycaps ask these questions; so we end up with some bags that are locked without the owner present. We follow a protocol to have them notified unless we're in our "crunch time," which is 30 minutes before the scheduled departure time: the time the airlines would like to have all of the bags already loaded. The other flaw comes from language barriers with some of our passengers who aren't fluent in English and most of our screeners who aren't fluent in Spanish as well as passengers who aren't fluent in English and don't speak Spanish.
We have one pod located inside the security identification display area (SIDA), and we rely on the airline ticket agent to address these questions with passengers. What happens then is if a passenger has a combination-type lock, it is preset to the combination, and the ticket agent writes "L" on the luggage tag that means we should spin the numbers once it clears screening. If the passenger has a padlock, the ticket agent places that inside a baggie, staples it to the luggage tag with the "L" written on it, and we replace the lock once it clears screening. During peak periods, not all ticket agents check to make sure the bags are unlocked, or passengers absent-mindedly claim their bags are unlocked when they really aren't.
We have international flights as well, and that's the toughest challenge for the exact reasons you mentioned. Many passengers lock their bags because of the potential for theft by baggage handlers and customs inspection officials at foreign airports. Exacerbating this is the requirement to check-in two to three hours early (the old hurry-up-and-wait syndrome) which means that we're usually working on getting an earlier scheduled domestic flight out, and can't always accomodate international travelers who want us to screen their bags immediately. This is where the balancing act between customer service and meeting airline time lines gets pretty tough. We try.
I don't know why TSA stopped the practice of using the plastic TSA seals. I agree with you, we should use them.
I strongly recommend using TSA-approved TravelSentry locks, especially for international flights. We have master keys that allow us to open them if necessary, and we can re-lock them afterwards.
As I said, I thought these were pretty standard at all TSA airports and they would have similar procedures (depending on airport configuration and a couple other factors which may change the specific procedure but still follow the same general principle).
Your description of the UK procedures reminded me about the time I was deployed in the Balkans when I was in the military. Many well-intentioned, good-hearted people sent us anonymous letters and packages addressed "to any soldier," especially around the Christmas holidays. Letters posed no problem, but packages certainly did as well as packages specifically addressed to people that were unclaimed (we would deploy on patrols that lasted several days before returning to home base).
The SOP was to detonate these packages as a security precaution. A lot of homemade chocolate chip cookies were blown up as a result.
