Originally Posted by Efrem
That said, the bottleneck more often than not is the X-ray screening itself. No amount of advance preparation will make that go faster, as it is driven by the speed of the X-ray operator. Faster preparation will just mean more standing around with cold feet and dirty socks.
I second this excellent observation.
In my experience, this is the major change in checkpoint throughput since September 14, 2001. Because the screeners are looking for dozens of innocuous items previously ignored by screeners, the bags are moving thru the x-ray machines very slowly.
Despite hearing constantly that the problem is primarily due to the "unprepared" traveler, more often than not, I disagree.
Of course, I have been behind some slowpokes who don't seem to know the drill. Nevertheless, the 30 to 45 seconds it takes them to disrobe and remove computer and divest change, phone, keys, etc. usually only allows the x-ray screener to catch up and free up some conveyor space for the slowpoke's carryons. But there are exceptions, especially at slow times when the slowpokes could act like they have someplace to go.
Most of the time when I approach the x-ray machine, there is a large backup of carryon bags from the pax ahead of me. I've had idiot pax and idiot screeners rudely tell me to proceed thru the WTMD, but I can't very well do that before I've placed all my carryons on the conveyor. On top of that, I refuse to proceed thru the WTMD until it is clear that all of my x-ray items are inside the x-ray tunnel.
At the snail's pace the x-ray operators tend to clear bags, it is obvious that we need 3 or 4 x-ray machines per WTMD. We have invested too heavily in WTMD (walking thru takes 5 seconds per pax at most) yet it usually takes the screeners 50-90 seconds to x-ray my bags to their satisfaction.