Only at your airport, eyecue. At other airports, the barkers bark louder and they have a 'pre-screening' table on the way to the ID checker where pax are asked about their fluids, er, liquids.

I consider things quite heavenly in the UK, thank you very much. I have had so many 'please' and 'thank yous' in recent months there and in Germany, and even apologies for a 5 minute wait at 530am at the T1 transfer checkpoint during peak summer travel season. Nobody has ever barked at me, grabbed me, caused me pain, or otherwise treated me in an unpleasant fashion.

And this included being behind passengers who had their liquids checked due to being oversize, and my own questionable item being swabbed and tested.

And not a WBI to be seen from my own personal experiences (not to say that they are not in use, but I do think that their use in the UK is overstated here sometimes)

Crazy lines! Fault of NoS?
 

Coming out of the DCA Delta pier about 5pm tonight, I observed a CRAZY long line for the security checkpoint. Pax filled up the entire zig-zag line maze and then started extending down the concourse toward the US Airways pier. They actually had an employee (wearing a yellow reflective safety vest) there whose sole purpose appeared to be to wrangle the line -- the direction of the overflow line was right across the path of those people exiting the Delta pier, so he stood there to ensure the people waiting for security did not block the exit.

The Delta pier has 3 stations to check the bodies of passengers -- two have MMW (both of which were active this evening) and one has just a WTMD.

Given the time of day, I guess its possible that the line was the result of post-work rush of pax who were leaving on trips/catching the Delta Shuttle back up to NY/what have you. But I have flown out of DCA a number of times in the 5-7 pm range (granted, from a different pier) and the lines were not half this bad -- indeed, this was the worst line I have seen in 2 years of living in DC, despite having flown at all times of day and on holiday weekends.

Anyone fly more frequently from DCA who can tell me if this is standard, unusual, or the new state of affairs post-NoS?

Since the AIT easily requires 5x to 10x longer to traverse than a magnetometer, one should expect the security lines to move more slowly by an equivalent factor. Knowing this, the TSA should have increased the number of screening stations correspondingly. Did they? Nope.

Exactly. Even with AIT running full tilt, it's not fast, and then they have the people who fail the AIT and need frisked anyway.

Not for me. At ORD (T1 Premier line) the nude-o-scopes have been roped off for my three departures (all weekday early AM) since Nov. 1. I guess the TSA folks at ORD realized the insanity that would result from using the strip-search machines during peak AM business travel times.

I had to "opt out" several times before the new rules (BTW: where can I read the text of these supposed government regulations that affect me?). Now it's WTMD only. The other airports are free of the voyeur toys.

Note to terrorists: the new rules make your job easier. All you have to do is fly during peak travel times or fly out of an airport without the voyeurism aids :rolleyes:

eyecue: Are you joking, or have people suddenly decided that 2 liter bottles of soda bottles should be in carry-on bags? I have not taken my LGAs (LaGuardias?) out of my bag for quite a while. I used to put the LaGuardias in my government rationed 1 quart bag of freedom (still in my carry-on), but no longer. I have not had any LaGuardia questioned in over 100 flights, even though I've had to endure several bag checks because of "threats" like sheet-feed scanners, none of which detected or were because of LaGuardias. Too bad I've had to endure the actual LaGuardia more than a few times. :D