<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by PVDtoGO:
I might be missing something here, so please help me out. I have heard mentioned on this board, a few times, that airlines with brief turn times will suffer with the increased security at the check points.
From my position, these are somewhat unrelated. Passengers who don't get to the gate in time as a result of the longer lines, more intense searches, etc, may miss their flight. But how does the security checkpoint affect the plane's turn time? It is the passengers responsibility to get to the gate.
Thanks!
[This message has been edited by PVDtoGO (edited 11-09-2001).]</font>
In a case like this JetBlue incident (which just happended to be a JetBlue flight, could have been any airline), once they found the problems at the security checkpoint gate they took everybody off an airplane, had them step back out through security, and then come through again to be properly screened. I would hope that included a search of the plane too, but even if it didn't there isn't any way a plane can turn around in 30 or so minutes if they have to drag everybody off and reboard an entire flight after the delay for screening the second time.
All these little delays of a minute here and a minute there start to add up. I don't think an airline will be able to keep it's schedule if they show 200 people checked in two hours early but only 15 were at the gate because of security delays, they would have to hold the plane a bit or try to move those people to the front of the line.
It's not just an issue of getting there early enough, as this incident showed. You could have gotten there the day before, but because somebody wasn't doing their job everybody was delayed.