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Old Sep 1, 2005 | 11:52 pm
  #25  
channa
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Originally Posted by TSAman
I've seen and heard way to many TSA misconceptions on here and on the news and from people word of mouth. I'm a TSA/DHS employee. I'm here to educate and clear up the misconceptions people have.

Welcome to FlyerTalk!

While we certainly appreciate your good intentions, it's important ot keep in mind that many stations handle situations differently. So differently, that a frequent traveller may believe the SOP varies by station.

We have seen TSA employees come on the board and suggest that something is supposed to be handled one way, and insist that it must be consistently applied, just to find out it can be radically different across stations. Of course many screeners don't travel as much as very frequent flyers, so they don't see this day-in and day-out.

I think you'll find the inconsistency is the source of much of the frustration.

Examples of such inconsistency:

- All shoes must be removed at so-called "shoe carnival" airports.
- Regardless of alarm or swab results, shoes must be removed during secondary screening at EWR.
- In addition to laptops, umbrellas are to be removed from bags at DCA. They even announce this.

So when frequent flyers see the same so-called Standard Operating Procedure implemented differently at various stations, it's undermines the credibility of the TSA organization.
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