Originally Posted by mikeef
Whirled,
Sorry, you are clearly in the wrong in your responses. There are a number of things that you should be doing to mitigate your experiences at the airport. It appears that you are a novice traveler, so let me give you some advice on enhancing your airport experience.
1. Plan ahead, both for security and timing. For instance, let's say that you are planning on traveling from Miami to Boston on a Friday afternoon 12 months from now. Don't wait until right before the trip to begin developing your airport strategy. Instead, go to the airport each Friday afternoon between now and then. Keep a careful chart of how long the security line is and look for trends in the wait times. That way, you will have a better idea of exactly how to plan your travel. A few weeks before your trip, start going to the airport every day to plan. Look for last-minute changes at security that may affect you. I understand that security time waits can change drastically on a daily basis, so this is something that you must prepare for. Effective time management will greatly increase your chances of making your flight.
2. Interview TSA and security officials ahead of time. The TSA is a large organization, and to expect each employee to understand the different rules and interpret them the same way is just silly. After all, you see a sharpened pencil where I see a potential dagger. By interviewing the TSA employees at your local airport, you will not only earn their trust but also their appreciation for having such an interest in their jobs.
3. Be careful of what you wear. In order to expedite my personal screening process, I remove all my clothes ahead of time and cover myself in saran wrap. Therefore, I have no shoes to remove and am carrying no metal objects.
4. Items are never confiscated at the checkpoints. You always have an option not to fly, so losing grandma's silver tea set, which could be used as a weapon, should not be an issue. Careful implementation of point #2 above should prevent your reaching this stage, however.
As you can see, there are a number of things that you can do to make your trip to the airport an enjoyable one. I hope that you think about some of the strategies that I have suggested and use them in your next flight.
Mike
Words we can all live by!
To be truthful you can never really know what it is going to be like at the airport. Most times there is a 5 minute wait. At other times it is a zoo and security is examining everybody and everything for some unexplained reason. And an hour in line is possible. To me the worst case is that you will have some nice quiet time to read at the gate for an extra hour.