Originally Posted by Bart
My challenge to you is:
1) Should we just ignore the threat of shoe bombs completely and rely on the statistical probability that a significant majority of passenger footwear do not have explosives inserted inside of them? Is passenger convenience the priority here?
2) For those of you who believe that something needs to be done to prevent a shoe bomb from being smuggled through security, is there a better method than the current procedure? If so, I'm interested in your suggestion. Please understand that if you're going to propose better technologies such as the walk-thru explosives detection portal, there's a cost associated with that. Should EPTs be installed at every airport? Only major hubs? At only certain cities? Use your thinking caps; money doesn't grow on trees, you know.
3) For those of you who truly, honestly, in your heart-of-hearts, believe that the Richard Reid incident was a one-in-a-million occurence, please explain your rationale. I am genuinely curious how you can dismiss it so easily.
I'm looking for reasoned responses here. There's enough whining and complaining in here to take up a lot of bandwidth, and I'll simply ignore the standard FrequentWhiner cliche' responses. I'm looking for a true discussion.
Since you asked Bart, here are my thoughts as to how it should be handled:
If a passenger proceeds through the WTMD wearing compliant shoes and the WTMD
does not alarm, they should be free to proceed.
If a passenger proceeds through the WTMD wearing compliant shoes and the WTMD
does alarm, they should get a second-chance check your pockets, take off jewelry etc. and if it still alarms, off to secondary for full screening.
If a passenger proceeds through the WTMD wearing non-compliant shoes and the WTMD
does not alarm, the passenger should only be required to submit to a shoe swab and when cleared the person should be free to proceed.
If a passenger proceeds through the WTMD wearing non-complaint shoes and the WTMD
does alarm, they should get a second-chance check your pockets, take off jewelry etc. and if it still alarms, then they get sent to secondary for the full treatment.
If the above guidelines are followed, I would not take issue with receiving secondary.
I do not understand why people are penalized with a full body search when the reason they are pulled aside is solely for having non-compliant shoes. If you are pulled aside for the shoes, then inspect the shoes!
As for
Superguy's original question posed as to how to deal with the mandatory shoe carnival airports, since my home airports SFO & HNL are two of the most notorious, this is what I do.
Whenever I am sent to secondary for failing to remove my shoes (I cannot due to a physical disability), I submit to the full secondary and when I am cleared, I ask for a complaint form. This usually flusters the screener because her immediate concern is about herself. She calls a supervisor over and the supervisor tries to talk you out of filling out the form by saying that everything she did was correct. I tell them that statistics are very important and that despite the fact that I wear these shoes through many other airports in the US which have no issue with them, their airport does. That is the point where they tell me the other 15 or so airports are wrong and they are right.
Ever since TSA reported the ridiculously low number of complaints about the breast groping (I think some talking head said only 400 complaints were filed) I realized it was very important to take the time to fill out the form each and every time. The number crunchers are only going to look at the statistics given to them. I am going to make my voice heard in those numbers. When I went through security at SFO on Friday, I didn't have the time to fill out the form and turn it into the supervisor, so I took it with me. Now I have a blank form that I can make copies of, fill out in advance, and hand it in. That should shave off a few minutes of the procedure.