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[This message has been edited by mbstone (edited Jan 16, 2004).]

"Are you telling me that @ "your" airport you (as a group) are following SOP to the letter ?"

Yes we do and we have no problem with screeners studying the SOP. We actually encourage it.

Amazing, ain't it.

I'm sorry, but if you believe that you and the rest of the screeners @ your airport are following SOP to the letter, Mgt. has you snow-blind. I would be willing to wager, a months salary, that I, or any full-time screener, could come and observe a shift @ your airport, and find things you're doing, that aren't SOP.

"Some of the looks we get when a passenger alarms goes out and takes off the offending item and then is still put in the pen for continuous."

A suggestion I had was if you know the next person will be a continuous instead of having a person back up and take the offending item off just send them into the pen for secondary. Why waste their time when they are going through secondary anyway.

Continuous is going to happen. No one here is going to change that.

So your suggestion is to deny a passenger a second chance, even though the procedure in place says it. Why have the procedure then, why not go back to the single pass?

Just so we "look busy"? The worst thing I've heard caught during a continuous is a pocket knife, which most of us seem to agree isn't a creaible weapon to a plane.

Don't you think this is completely stupid?

I've even got a idea:

For the next few months, we do continuous screening. Everytime a item is found that is prohibited in the wanding area, we ask the screener if it was a continuous or a ringer. On some kind of paper, you record this information over that few month period.

At the end of it, you review it and if you see that continuous screening is something that needs to be in place, then maybe we should keep it up. But send that paperwork up the chain of command, to say the FSD of your area. Tell him/her why the test was done (to see if the harrasment factor is worth it).

I know my airports case, very few items have been caught during a continuous screening in a 2 year period.

[This message has been edited by screenerx (edited Jan 16, 2004).]

Screenerx...

We may be on 2 sides of a politically driven equation, but I tend to agree with many of your comments...I know what buzzes and what doesn't and think about that when preparing my body for departure day everytime I fly.

"It isn't about the metal." is the current line being employed at MCI by the "contractors" to justify the secondary hasslement of customers who do not set off the detector. And when I question it, they just repeat it.

Very effective mindwashing/training/hypnotizing or whatever they are doing at MCI.

Quote:

A suggestion I had was if you know the next person will be a continuous instead of having a person back up and take the offending item off just send them into the pen for secondary. Why waste their time when they are going through secondary anyway.

We wanted to do the same thing but were told in our "meeting" that we have to offer a second chance if the passenger alarms on ifs ands or buts.

A revised AVO came out during the week giving the FSD more freedom with the second chance. Maybe this will help.

Amazing is not the word I would use. Bullsh*t would be more appropriate

quote:
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Originally posted by TSAMGR:
"Are you telling me that @ "your" airport you (as a group) are following SOP to the letter ?"
Yes we do and we have no problem with screeners studying the SOP. We actually encourage it.

Amazing, ain't it.


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We can read the SOP anytime we want as a matter of fact we have to take a written test on it once a pay period (open book)so I don't think we are discouraged from reading it.

>>Amazing is not the word I would use. Bullsh*t would be more appropriate<<

Maybe at your airport but not at mine. I make sure the SOPs are available.

Making the SOP available is required (per SOP).

But making it available doesn't mean it's being followed "to the letter" !!

You can read it 'till your eyes bleed, but that doesn't mean it's being followed either.

And add in who's interpitation of that SOP is being followed seeing that TSA HQ refuses to take question about the SOP for clarification.

True Dude, True.