I just got back from my first vacation in 2 years to see some friends in Texas and family in Florida.

First leg was San Diego to Houston (Hobby), april 22. All passengers were being scanned using the backscatter machine except for children under 12 and mothers with young children. I also witnessed a elderly lady getting a very quick patdown because she could not stand for the backscatter. Everyone was professional at the checkpoint. There was no yelling. I assumed all the TSO's were told to be very passenger friendly considering it was Easter weekend.

I did not opt out for two reasons. I wanted to see if the machine actually worked, first. Second, I have some industrial injuries from the late 80's that have left me with wires holding the right side of my rib cage in place with some very large scars. Do I like how invasive the scanner is, no. Did it work or did it give some kind of false reading because of my previous injuries? It worked.

Second leg was Houston (Hobby) to Tampa, april 23. All passengers were either being scanned using the millimeter wave scanner or being directed to the walk through metal detector. All children, 12 and under were being sent through the WTMD, including mothers with babies. All the TSO's were very professional, no yelling or barking. I tried to self opt out by getting behind a very attractive woman in her late 20's. The TSO directing traffic sent her through the machine and then had me wait. So I then went into the MMW scanner.

Considering that the BSX did not show anything, I was curious to see if the MMW would do the same. Not to be. The TSO on the other side explained what he was going to do, which was just run his gloved finger around the inside of my waistband. He had a box of gloves right there and put a new pair on. So I have some real concerns at the this point about the effectiveness of the MMW versus the BSX in false positives.

Tampa to San Diego, april 30th. Let me start off with this, who is FSD there? Because that person needs to be fired. It took 50 minutes from the time we entered the security line to the time my brother and myself could go to our gate. They had 2 lines open for security screening. Both had WTMD and MMW scanners. All the TSO's were friendly and professional. By the time we got near the front of the line they opened a WTMD line only. So we both opted out.

They did have one of the lines with the MMW and WTMD for elderly, disabled and families with young children. I couldn't see how they were performing the patdown, but it appeared that it was a pretty quick frisk. They were prioritized to the front that way.

I definitely have a problem with the millimeter wave scanner. First time through one and get a false positive. The grope itself was very quick and very limited. But I did not find one TSO with a bad attitude at any airport I was in. My view is that from the top down in the TSA, they wanted Easter to be a no new complaint time. No yelling, barking orders or anyone being a smug self righteous idiot.

The wait times to get screened at San Diego and Houston were less than 20 minutes each. Very reasonable. Tampa on the other hand was a cluster of epic size. By the time I got to the front of security, the line was back to the shuttles and growing. Very poor planning on some FSD's part.

I will be opting out of the glass box from now on. All in all, I had a very nice time visiting family and friends. Flying, not so much.

One thing that doesn't often get mentioned is why the airlines lets this happen. Flying has become less pleasant over the recent years. Perhaps the airlines is willing to take a hit due to TSA over having passengers complain about the flights. IOW-after TSA finishes with them anything we, the airlines throws at them, will seem like a minor annoyance.

That is because flyers who have had a bad experience aren't organized or well enough informed to make the most of their complaint. They may file a complaint with TSA, worthless; call or write their Congressman, also worthless; or blog about it, again a worthless effort. By then they have no energy left to complain to the airline.

None of the above parties have a vested interest in fixing this problem. However, the airline relies on flyer revenues to stay alive. They need the money every day, day after day or they go out of business. If we all made this the airlines problem and prevented them from copping out by saying there is nothing they can do, they would get involved and there would be change. They have the lobbying muscle.

But for now, they get a free pass because flyers are letting them off the hook.

You've made a huge assumption here. Just because you didn't experience a false positive - doesn't mean the machine is working. There is quite a bit of evidence that it gives far too many false negatives as well.

(Such as letting thru guns in 5 checkpoints in DFW... among much other evidence.)

For that reason alone, you should consider opting-out, as a show of support for screening methods, such as a WTMD, that have a good chance of actually working.

You make very good points that I will take a long hard look at. I just don't understand why the TSA isn't using the WTMD and explosive sniffing dogs and the swabbing as first line protocol. Then again it is the government and nothing much makes sense from them.

The Southwest terminal at TPA is a zoo. The 2 times I went through it last month(I was escorting my niece) was proof that the NoS slows down security. TSA made everyone go through the NOS. Belongings were backed up on the X-ray, so much so that the scanners had to just stop and wait for people to get through to pick up their stuff. Then another belonging rolled through. It was the slowest security I have seen. I vowed to not fly Southwest out of TPA.