tornado163

Apologies if this is the wrong forum/subforum.

My husband only flies 1-2 trips a year. But he is consistently selected for a pat-down at US airports. In the last 2 years, the only time he didn't get a pat-down from was a flight from London-Heathrow. It frustrates him greatly. He never gets "SSSS" on his boarding pass and everything is normal until he passes through the metal detector or body scanner. Some info, not sure if it's relevant. He's in his 30s, naturalized US citizen, Caucasian, no metal implants, a couple of tattoos, never been arrested.

Our most recent flight from EWR to SEA last week was even worse. I swear I'm not making this up. An unopened chocolate bar he bought at Wegmans tested positive for explosive material. So he got to spend 40 minutes with TSA while they swabbed every item in his carry on twice. In total he got 3 full body pat-downs from the TSA. And I was left to wonder what the hell was going on because while I was 20 feet away and could see everything happening, he wasn't allowed to explain it to me, nor did any TSA agents explain what was happening.

The end result was that we barely made our flight (literally the last 2 passengers to board, nobody was in the boarding area when we ran up at T-16) and he's really pissed off about flying in the future. Is there anything we can do to minimize the odds of him being randomly selected in the future? Or ways to avoid completely non-threatening grocery items tripping the sensors?

droopydog

I have had a false positive on the explosive check before as well, and it is a time consuming experience. There is not much you can do other than to ensure you are not the cause of the detection (using the same bag you use to take ammunition to the shooting range, etc.). I fly 50 trips per year and carry the same stuff on every flight. It happened twice to me...

Is the metal detector going off or are they saying it is random? If it is going off because of metal, then he has something on his person that is setting it off. If they say it is random, then perhaps applying for pre-check might mitigate that.

Often1

If only flies 1-2 times per year, that means 3-4 patdowns across the past 2 years. Not sure that is "consistently". It appears that he is not pre-selected for secondary, e.g. "SSSS" on his BP, so either it really is random or there is something he is carrying or wearing which attracts attention.

Pre-Check won't end his troubles is this is targetted, but it may speed the process. At $85 for 5 years, that is worth the effort.

arttravel

There have been articles online about items that result in false positives -- glycerin in lotions is an example.

One news article mentioned the issue of food

"...high-tech scanners detect organic compounds contained in some explosives and sometimes give false alerts on food. That requires a hands-on bag check, which slows down the line"

https://www.chicagotribune.com/trave...329-story.html.

Is he getting the random screening beep or is there something setting it off?

As Precheck I have had to have the random check -- the beep.... it is no fun.

tornado163

By our count, over the past 2 years, he's 6 for 6 in getting a patdown at security at US airports. That seems unlikely to be random. If the machine is set to 5% random then that would be 5% ^ 6 = 1 in 64 million. Not impossible, but not likely to be random. Even if the machines had a 10% random rate, that'd be 1 in 1 million. Maybe it's glycerine in whatever moisturizer or soap he used those days...

As for his evil candy bar, we did notice that the belt seemed to be flagging ~30-50% of all bags. Nobody got the thorough his treatment his bag did. But it kept giving a positive. It wasn't until they swabbed his items and tested them at a different machine which gave a negative result that they let him go. So maybe the scanner in our lane wasn't calibrated well.

kklems

Food seems to cause issues. Twice when we flew out of LNK (a 4 gate airport with security one hour before the flight and only screening 50 passengers) we have been stopped and had extra searching. Once my wife, who had a bag of dried fruit which apparently caused grave concern (it was also an issue on the return flight home out of MIA-but once they saw what it was the issue was done. Maybe the density of the fruit confuses the xray reader) and than my 13 year old son had a sealed movie theater size box of juju bees that had to swabbed and inspected. This from an airport where you can still park your car and leave it unattended in front of the terminal.

cargueiro

The best way to avoid and additional search is to ensure you do not set off the WTMD. If you set it off, the TSA chap will need to resolve it.

Of course you may still be selected randomly and the percentage of passengers selected will vary from airport to airport and depend on the current threat level.

It is also important to avoid prohibited items in your cabin baggage and personal items you divest for x-ray. If you are found to be carrying prohibited or even restricted items in cabin baggage that might trigger a search.

Of course he might fit a certain profile and this may also be triggering searches.

Sherab Sherab

I am in a similar situation.I fly 1-2 times a year, one domestic, one international or both domestic. I get SSSS on international return flight from Asia. No SSSS on domestic flights.

I have GE. 5 months ago, the metal detector or scanner beeped on my domestic roundtrip flight. My pockets were empty. I didn't have SSSS. 2 months ago, there was no beep on my domestic flights.

Why it beeps when you have empty pockets? It wasn't a hassle though.

TWA884

Take a look at this thread:

TSA PreCheck "Random" Extra Screening?

cur

the metal detectors are programmed to beep for a random every x amount of pax that travel thru it. some places in the world it's just a hand swap, some places it's the body scanner or pat down, some places it's ssss. that's the way she goes, it's nothing personal, especially if you're caucasian LOL

i always fly with food and i always get searched. tortillas, peppers, patties, eggs etc. i'm guessing because things like tortillas are dense. just have them removed and on a tray then your search goes way faster. not a big deal.

Loren Pechtel

Sounds like my wife--a good chance of a SSSS on flights to the US, but never outbound and if we are flying early in the day it's likely we get pre-check boarding passes.

Maybe it's sensitive and you have some metal in your clothes?

Yup. Organic masses get flagged on TSA x-rays. Likewise on the agricultural inspection x-rays--although with those so long as the average density is well below water they don't seem to care about it. (I would expect to have to open a suitcase with a jar of peanut butter, but I would not expect to have to open one with a jar of peanuts.)