As you may know, the employees that check ids and boarding passes when you first get to the front of the security line are not the TSA. They are contractors hired by the airlines, usually working for an outside company that provides adjunct services on the ground to airlines. Once these people check your documents, you then enter the TSA part of the checkpoint. But these people (the document checkers) are not at all part of the TSA, and have no law enforcement officer authority.

So I wonder, you hear crazy stories about these document checkers sometimes, what would happen if you just entered the TSA part of the checkpoint and bypassed a document checker yelling at you that you can't do this or that or use that line, etc?

I wonder what authority they have, or how such an incident would paly out? Would an employee of the TSA have to mediate the dispute?

I don't think the general public also fyi knows these first document checking employees are NOT TSA.

Interesting also re your f/a making up a fake security risk. If you don't get anywhere with United on that, you might want to take that up with the feds or something.

Is there anything you said as to why the f/a might do this? It sounds like all you were asking about is your seat assignment. Plenty of passengers ask questions of the f/a about seat assignments.

Does anyone know also if the f/a has the authority to have a customer bann from UA? Somehow I doubt it. The f/a can and may tell you anything to scare you, etc. I believe an f/a can file some sort of incident report, but unless they get the police involved I'm not sure the pax would be bann from UA? But we have people on the board with more inside knowledge?

How easy or difficult is it for an airline to bann a pax? How often is this done? How many pax are bann from flying an airline? How is the bann technically enforced, some sort of name match list? What happens when a PNR comes up with the bann name? How often does the match list get run against the live PNRs?

The only such thing I read was re AA and them banning someone shortly after 9/11 and it was sort of a racial profiling thing.