Originally Posted by
Cookie Jarvis
You will find this type of scenerio at small regional airports. Technically, TSA is suppose to be doing these "random" screening per their SOP. You just don't see it much at larger airports because there just isn't time. Some barely have the personnel to resolve alarms and other issues nevermind have time to pick on the general traveling public.
The airline I worked for was out of a dinky one gate airport. Our plane held a whopping 19 passengers and stopped at 2 airports before ours. Many times we would only be putting 3 or 4 passengers on. Many times the number of TSA workers in the checkpoint would outnumber the number of passengers we had for that flight. More than likely 1 person out of the 3 or 4 would be pulled over for "extra screening". Many were people who flew with us weekly, so I received many complaints about the gropings and the searches they were put through at our airport. (Yes, passengers told me that they weren't treated like this at other bigger airports.) Eventually, you just wouldn't see the people anymore, and we just knew that they had opted to fly out of a larger airport over an hour away just to avoid TSA nonsense.
The sad thing is that no matter how much we complained about it and them--hey we were the ones losing passengers, nothing changed. There is too many people out there that think TSA is doing a "great job", and dare I say, grateful for the "security".
Excellent observations. Twice I flew into North Platte, Nebraska for depositions. Both times departing, TSA groped me. Four screeners (two male, two female) for a 19 seat twin turboprop. Neither time did my boarding pass have the dreaded SSSS marking. Neither time did I alarm the WTMD or have bulges on my person/in my clothing. Other attorneys - male and female - boarding both flights out of North Platte had the same experience - no SSSS, no alarm, no bulges, but TSA gropes.
I imagine that the FSD of Denver International has decreed that a large percentage of passengers departing North Platte would be subjected to groping, because Great Lakes Airline feeds UA at DIA. From North Platte, the only even halfway reasonable alternative is to drive about three hours to Omaha. But that is not much of an alternative. Oh well, we cannot take any chances with our aviation security, right? Think of the children.
