david55

Thanks for the comments...we had been traveling for nearly 24 hours straight with no sleep. Any deviance, in our state of tiredness, was enough to set off a bit of " why me ?"

CDKing

Just TSA pretending to be something useful. I mean really what does it accomplish other than catch reselling of tickets.

Points Scrounger

Moderators: please thinking about changing "causeway" to "jetway" -- thanks!

ANC

no big thing here. As mentioned they still do random checks at gates now and then. Not as much as they did right after 911 but they still do it once and a while

andymell

I've seen CBP, TSA, and local police doing jetway checks. Sometimes it appears random, sometimes it appears based on the visual appearance of the traveller, and once it was pretty obvious that the GA signaled to them. In that case, I later overheard the GA telling the lead FA that some pax luggage was to be offloaded because they had been arrested. I assume it was someone with a warrant who was caught trying to leave the country.

That said, both of the things the OP experienced are fairly common, so probably just (bad) luck they happened together. The search for "food" is actually looking for food -- especially meat -- and other agricultural products. Somehow this helps keep mad cow, hoof and mouth, etc out of the US.

HiFlyerAS

30 year FA here....yes, I think you were definitely targeted after your secondary screening. They must have had some doubts to your itinerary and were making sure you were boarding the flight you said that you were. It's rare to see TSA agents out at the gate doing secondary screening...even rarer to stop someone in the loading bridge. If you didn't notice them questioning anyone else then it's likely they were waiting just for you. Why they do this no one knows...maybe you had a bead of sweat on your forehead during your initial screening. After that long of journey I'd be a bowl of jello and would have likely triggered something as well!

ANC

just walk past them with the "Im bored, tired, and annoyed that everybody is moving like turtles" frequent flyer demeanor and your all good to go


But what I want to know with your theory is if the agents were in the jetway how did they know what 2 passengers they were looking for? Were they carrying around mug shots?

Question to the OP, Did you hear any strange beeps from the boarding gate scanner when the GA scanned your passes? Like the dreadful beep you hear when youve just been downgraded from F to Y because of an A/C swap? Or the sound that happens if the BP is scanned twice

david55

We were trying to recall if there was anything unusual about our boarding pass check at the gate...we were so tired ( having just come off a 11 hour flight from CDG) We couldn't recall.*** And if the gate agent somehow signaled the TSA agents that " this was them".

*** actually when I do think about it something happened when he scanned our boarding pass because I remember looking over at the screen as did he.....

david55

FWIW though...we both got TSA prechk boarding passes and flew through our initial screening ...so they must not have been that suspicious.

We also have global entry although we did not use it since there was no one in line at immigration when we arrived at SFO. That may have been our initial mistake.

jackal

Using the button usually results in a faster fix than a post in the thread that I may miss.

CDKing

It doesnt always work. Last time they followed me down the jetway.

david55

We were stopped on the jetway in SFO by two TSA in blue gloves and asked for BP and ID Friday afternoon. This was SFO-SEA...the last leg of a return from Athens.

What made it suspicious to me was that we had also been stopped in customs for a secondary screening ( They kept asking if we had any food) and although I was really tired and out of it...both my husband and I felt that the TSA were actually waiting for us on the jetway since we did not see them stop anyone else.

We have global entry ( which we did not use this time because there were no lines) and had a TSAprechk on our boarding passes for this segment.

HiFlyerAS

They probably had photos taken when you were in customs. We're all being watched, ya know... In Seattle, police cars are constantly scanning license plates of cars as they drive around town, looking for bad guys. In my neighborhood they have scanners to estimate drive times to different parts of the city and they use license plate recognition to do it. Cameras are installed in busy neighborhoods but so far they've been supposedly kept turned off. No where to hide I'm afraid. ;-)

CDKing

Dobut it. Last time they were only stopping people with backpacks. Another day it was every one with a roller. One day it was only females and one day only males. IAH always seems to be a big airport where they like to do gate checks.

jjmiller69

I've got stopped 2 times more than once over the last few years. Going through security (random check) and at the gate random check again. I think last fall I just started laughing and said let's do it again. It was a female that did the checking and she had a good sense of humor when I said just did this 45 minutes ago. She did say I could wait for a male who was checking someone else and I told her no were loading and I want a drink. lol