We've thought about that, but on the exact dates of my April flight the tix came in at nearly 2x the cost of PHX and the rental cars actually cost more due to the more limited selection in Tucson, notwithstanding the lack of that nearly 100% facility tax PHX has going.

Case in point: $132 7-day rental, PLUS $107 in facility taxes and fees. Somebody's gotta pay for that fancy stadium they built to host the Superbowl, and that off-site rental car lot. They're building one in SEA. Ugh.

Even without that facility fee thing, I couldn't get a car anywhere near $132 in Tucson, and most people don't know that renting a car off-site from an airport in Arizona is now a living nightmare due to the crackdown on illegals renting cars. Lots of questions - they want to annoy you so you'll just go to the airport to get your car and pay the $$$. Two IDs are mandatory. No 2nd ID? No car. (Rent at airport without a ticket? HA. I've never been asked, but if you get asked and don't have a ticket/BP/receipt, no car.)

I have a passport, but to get to the off-site Budget, Hertz, or Enterprise locations in Peoria I'd have to take a shuttle, at $65 r/t. It's not worth the $30 savings (after tips) to deal with that. There used to be reliable hourly public bus service to that area, but after budget cuts that's now a 4-hour trip on 5 different buses and light rail/shuttles. Mom doesn't drive (thank your deity), so she can't come pick us up.

We keep trying to get Mom to move... maybe we'll succeed. Then again, she's 85 and we've been trying for most of the last 15 years. I think we're out of luck!

I saw this thread and immediately told my brother (telecommuting is wonderful). He rolled his eyes and mentioned it didn't surprise him; some of what we've seen out of PHX would make a book's worth of horror stories, and that's just Terminal 4!

I hope this doesn't make travelers avoid the US (not just Arizona), but I'll bet it sure won't help.

On the contrary, I hope it does. I want the tourist economy to tank. I want the hotels to be mostly empty. I want no lines at Disney because no one wants to get raped by the TSA at Orlando.

Maybe then the powerful people who depend on tourism tax dollars to remain unhanged will do something about these STASI wannabees.

I received a reply to my inquiry from :
Jeff Foland, ASC
Security Superintendent
Operations Division

Phoenix Sky Harbor Intl Airport
3300 East Sky Harbor Blvd.
Phoenix, AZ 85034
(602) 273-2766
www.phxskyharbor.com/airportsecurity

"The current FSD for PHX is Heather Callahan <[email protected]>"

Pls make a note of it if needed.

It was the UA, CO, AS terminal. Is it T3?

It's not often that someone's career path is profiled in a major market newspaper; please keep us abreast of your interactions with Ms. Callahan.

Moving up in a down economy
For the ambitious, entry-level jobs are far from a dead end

By Katie Johnston Chase
Globe Staff / September 12, 2010

When Heather Callahan started working for the Transportation Security Administration screening passengers at Logan International Airport in 2002, she looked at the airport’s deputy federal security director and thought: “I wonder why I can’t have his job?’’

Six years later, she did.

Wow, that's how much money someone can make with TSA?
"Callahan moved back to Boston in 2008 to become the number two TSA employee at Logan, making almost $100,000 more a year than when she started six years before".
My Goodness, it gets worse and worse and worse and much, much more depressing post after post.

Sorry, I wasn't paying attention. I thought you were from PHX not the other way round :o .

One of the comments on Daily Kos raises the interesting and potentially effective strategy of making this a case of racial discrimination.

I believe that a legitimate argument can be made that the egregious treatment of these passengers was a product of their "being different" from the screeners and thus less worthy of proper treatment.

Similar evidence of this pattern can be seen in the theft cases at JFK and EWR where Indian and Middle Eastern passengers were targeted for theft.

I suggest that the OP file a complaint with Dept of Justice Civil Rights Division
http://www.justice.gov/crt/
Phone (202) 514-4609

There is no penalty of they decide not to pursue this. But this will place TSA in the exactly the position that they are seeking to avoid by groping everyone, being accused of racial bias. That is apparently what has happened here and their prosecution would be fitting retribution for this horrific misconduct.

^^
Agree. Money appears to be the only voice corporations listen too.
We can talk until we are blue in the face, and tell me what it has gotten us.
When businesses start to feel the pinch, then just maybe they will wake up and start caring about their customers.

I vote with my feet. I just wish others would also.

I forgot to include another outlet, The Drudge Report.

Submit the entire story in News Tips at lower right of page, be sure to include an email address so they can contact you. They usually post links but occasionally run their own stories. This one may be right up their alley.

They are very sympathetic to our plight and apparently Matt Drudge has had a run in with TSA and is no fan of the agency.

First off, all options are open. I just want to give it a little cool off period, since I am steamed and my wife and her mom will come home in 12 hrs or so.
When I travel in the U.S. I always opt out. They always target me, the 70 year old guy with a cane. Maybe they think I am easy prey just like Mrs. Ex and M-I-L? How many times did I post that old people, handicapped people and the like are top targets by TSA? It goes in reverse as well when I enter the U.S. CBP knows that I have a different passport and they always ask me intriguing questions, sometimes even send me to secondary. Why? Who knows. I would love to be 100% U.S. citizen, but the U.S. government leaves me no choice. I love freedom, ironically my first reason to emigrate to the States.. As I said, didn't work out as planned. And with their treatment of Mrs. EX and my kids with their Japanese passports, it's out of the question. If I could not buy things much more inexpensive in the U.S. than in Japan, I think I would never come back.

Are you sitting down? Here's the Google cache for the job she just filled:

Federal Security Director Job in PHOENIX, AZ
Vacancy No. TSA-TSES-11-05
Department Transportation Security Administration
Salary $119,554.00 to $172,550.00

I am consumed with this matter for over 12 hours, all through the night, posting and talking to Mrs. EX. Am I sitting down? It's not the sitting, it's the stomach now. This just is outrageous. Can you imagine what the retirement payout will be? I am just about fed up with all of this. The story goes that she was some sort of Executive in the "real world" and then started as a blue shirt with TSA and worked her way up the ladder? About $ 50.00/hr to be in charge of antagonizing airline passengers? Besides "us" it includes innocent non U.S. citizens, where they don't even offer a transit situation like all other countries in the world do. What a world? Quite tilted in the wrong direction, or?
I posted and others did as well : No other country in the world, third world, autocratic and even dictatorship countries have ever treated me ( us ) as bad as the United States has and is doing it at any single day, in and out. And that is with a U.S. passport and a Green Card holder. Think about it, a Green Card costs a lot of money and requires a lot of documentation. Still, they treat Mrs. EX like dirt. The biggest country, the strongest country, the best country, the ??? country? Not really, or?

Are these blue uniforms even human? The narrative there suggests both irrationality and sociopathic lack of empathy. We know the Jihaders (Asian version of the Crusaders) are disgusted with American culture. And TSA seems determined to make every charge seem true.

It seems that all over the world a uniform makes the wearer of it feel superior.
When my mom stole potatoes from the fields after the war to keep us fed, there were always dozens of uniform wearers to tell on her, although they were in the same situation and as hungry as her. Seems to be the nature of the beast.
Strangely enough, in Japan any uniform bearer is easily accessible and always
revered. And cops never hide as in the rest of the world. Different culture, I guess. One more reason why I love it here.

This whole episode makes me ashamed of my fellow countrymen who did this. And it makes me ashamed of the rest of the citizenry who go along with this.

Yeh, they do seem to want to flout the ugliest side of the country. Fact is, I voted against the people who passed the Patriot Act, so I'm extra mad at where it has brought us to. Most treasonous act in my lifetime. It's Joe McCarthy blown up many times.

Fortunately it is only a very small percentage that are doing it, but unfortunately it is people hired by the US Government, protected by the US Government, and paid wages with tax dollars from all the rest of us.

I guess complacency is easy as long as it happens to the other person. Most people are not even aware what is going on in America. We would never know of this story except that we read it here. We are just a tiny fraction of the population.

I don't know what it would take to get anyone to really notice what is going on, and truly care. The politicians are NOT to be trusted.

We are well on the way to a police state, and as long as people can watch "American Idol" and "Dancing with the Stars" they probably couldn't care less what else is happening around them.

I am so consumed with this and the injustice done to my family, my wife and M-I-L, that it is at a point where i cannot and refuse to comprehend this anymore. All my nightmares are coming true. For a person, a proud former PanAm pilot, who has traveled the world, the U.S. does indeed remind me of a totalitarian state, except that it is not advertised that way. I have been taking a lot of grief for the past years, but now the glass is too full. Enough is enough. Once it hits home, it hits the threshold.
From now on I will probably be triple x'd and quadruple checked, but that's o.k. Mrs. EX and I will be together and I can protect her.
I did let her down one single time,I let her fly alone and it created a really, really bad situation. That's on top of our bad situation with the earthquake and what followed. Who could have known???

This:

just makes me sick. You folks are out shopping for groceries in other countries because your own food supply is tainted with radiation, and you're maltreated and robbed?!?!! Please know that LOTS of Americans are watching what is happening in Japan and worried about you and that we do NOT approve of what is happening with our government.

Have posted the whole sorry mess to my own Twitter/FB. Keeping hopes up for you.

If you just look at the results, you could reasonably hypothesize that a criminal element is running the DHS and TSA. They have by design empowered all the little apparatchiks down the command chain to act as they act. It is not an accident. It takes deliberate and targeted staffing decisions to build up the kind of workforce that they have and to give the kind of physical power they have given those elements they have hired.

If a private airline had such an abusive person working with customers, how long would that person last? Not long, right? So why are they allowed to keep their jobs acting that way with TSA? The only reasonable conclusion is that TSA wants that behavior or finds it acceptable. Top down rot.

Wouldn't it be nice to get names and pictures then place ads in local newspapers showing our fellow citizens who these people are and what they have done?

It's T2. Usually TSA are pretty reasonable there - at least I haven't had an issue - yet.

I am so sorry for what happened to your wife and MIL.

They did not have cameras or phone cameras in the gas chambers and they never knew what would hit them. We all know, yet we are not allowed recorders, cameras in the sterile areas. We are not allowed to make comments, we are not allowed to make jokes. We are allowed to shut up and let things happen to us without questioning. Because questioning is evil and needs to be punished. How many millions died for that? And why did nobody learn anything from that? Why is it still allowed in the free-est country in the world??????? No, why is this mandated?

You are most definitely allowed to take photos/record at the checkpoint. As long as you don't "film the x-ray monitors :rolleyes:", there should be no problems.. You might have to deal with the clerks blocking the camera with their fat @$$, but feel free to record in the future.

Trouble is that its like cops, in that misdeeds of a fellow officer is off limits for criticism by the "good cops". They are like those New Yorkers who listened calmly to Kitty Genovese and thought "Boy, I'm glad that's not me".

Nice suggestion, but what's the reality? Do you really think entering security with a camera is advisable? Even me, as a U.S. "basher" cannot agree to that. That's a death sentence.
Mrs.EX was an ANA F/A and subjected to heavy interrogation in the "old" days when we shared a room together at my hotel in Seoul. Still, that's a piece of cake compared to now-a-days U.S.A. I am just mentioning this, because at that time Korea was a dictatorship and tightly controlled. Although nothing compared to the TSA/CBP situation. And that's the point!

Most Americans don't realize that the blood sacrifice to push North Koreans out of South Korea was shortly dishonored by support of a dictatorship. Unfortunately, a lot of Americans are now turning the same blind eye to dictatorial acts toward fellow citizens.

You want to think they are good, but????? It's totalitarianism, which ever way you turn it. And you don't want to believe it!!! Don't question authority.
The Yankees are the world champions as well as the Cowboys are the super bowl champions. Nobody knows those sports in the whole wide world, nobody cares, but the fans in the U.S. are happy. Games and Bread!

Plenty of FREE hosting companies for a website.

Pictures, names, address.

They take our names and address, and our only crime is trying to traverse the checkpoint.

If you set it up on Google blogspot, it places pretty high in rankings.

hint, hint, wink, wink.

^^^^^^

Folks, don't miss that post by Cartoon Peril at Daily Kos. He's made quite a meal of TSA-disparaging over there. I've bookmarked his essays and will be checking back often.

(Always glad to see lefty-linking sites heading the right direction, and I'm very disappointed that more of my ideological brethren & sistren are falling down on this. These are the same people that protest wars, nuclear power et al with impunity...Go figure.)

That was in 1953, you think any American remembers that? They don't remember the Vietnam War, they remember : ZILCH!
Remember, we are FT, a premier minority. That's all we are.

Dang! I didn't hear it the situations going on at Sky Harbor today. Why TSA is an inappropriate to touching his 89-years old grandmother. That's wrong! TSA can't be touching her at all and no one ever allowed go through the body scanners. Because this is not real safe for her at all.

OP, did you file a police report with the Phoenix Airport police? On the one hand they are quite useless and they actually murdered a woman they arrested in the concourse three years ago or so, God knows what else they did too her before killing her. Anyway, despite this, if you are able to get them to file a report, it will help you in many ways, from insurance claims to getting the TSA to investigate the matter. Best of luck.

Thanks for bringing it down to the basics, What does TSA have to do with feeling up a cancer ridden, 89 year old woman? I hate to think of it, but what satisfaction does it bring to a screener? How much brain does one need to have to figure out, that this cancer ridden great-grandmother being 89 years old with the desire to return home to a earthquake damaged country, is of no threat to anyone????
Why can't they figure out that I, a 70 year old retired pilot with a cane, a 1k with UA for many years, is no threat? Why are the singling us out all of the time????? What's their problem???

Actually, the body scanners is too extremely dangerous out there and does not good for own health risks. Because this is not real safe for your great-grandmother. You have to tell TSO to go through the metal detector and she couln't walks very well. She can't go through the body scanners. Yes, there is a threats from the backscatter machines. You have to avoidable the bodyscanners and next time if you go to terminals 3 is much safer and there is no bodyscanners at all.

You have to tell TSA to kept her privacy and not put her into the bodyscanners. You have keep aware of your grandmother is doing and she's still in wheelchair and she need assistance with another TSA officer to put in the secondary screening areas and not go through bodyscanners. You are responsible for your great-grandmother's life. You are risks from TSA behaviors at entire T2 today. You have to keep avoided T2 checkpoint. Just go through terminal 4 at checkpoint A and there is no bodyscanners. If you are flying out at entire T4 for next time. Because T2 is not real specific time at all.

I'm speculating, but I think some of those TSO's have a chip on their shoulder, and they take revenge on the world which they think has crapped on them. Trouble is, that type of person never picks on someone who can defend him/herself. The are pussies, so they try to make people miserable who've not got a great shake from life.

Yes.

But at this particular moment in time, I cannot help but think that anyone working for the TSA deserves to be crapped on...

Don't forget to let Senator John McCain know as well.

senator at mccain.senate.gov

Who knew fascism was a career with growth potential?