DEN, IND: You get punished for not taking your shoes off. Azzholes!

LGA (main terminal, UA): Set off magnetometer. It must have been set hypersensitive. But the guy let me go back and take my shoes off. How logical but I suppose this is against protocol. I criticized his magneto setting. "We do this for your safety."

IAD, DCA: My home airports have been hassle free except for one moron about 5 weeks ago who claimed that you had to take you shoes off before lunch!?!? But i was 12:05........

One more comment. When I get the "punishment" (e.g. IND and DEN) the dumb .......s carefully wand your shoeless feet. What idiotic behavior. God, I hate them!

Never check luggage but had skis..... in my ski bag I placed a brand new pair of bindings in the original sealed box. The TSA opens the box and doesn't close it so all the parts scatter in the bag. One plastic piece gets chipped and was in a real angry panic when I thought that one part was missing! However, the binding works fine and can't be bothered fighting the TSA and UA over this matter.

If you mean the second pass was logical, it's been policy since at least Dec. of 2003. We don't set the WTMD at my airport from my understanding and either should any other airport.

Second Chance is protocol.

They wand your feet and X-Ray your shoes.

Well spiff, gotta say, I'm convinced.

TSA is delaying/cancelling flights based on psychic tips.

Air marshalls leaving their guns on the bathroom counters in secure areas.

Being sent to secondary for not removing my flip-flops so that they could wand MY BARE FEET.

I actually feel LESS secure, knowing that complete morons are running the show.

At least they strip-searhed the future head of state of a country that believed Shrub about Iraq!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3616393.stm

Did that actually happen!!!? If it did, next time call the evening news. People should know what a ridiculous farce this is.

Someone with more ambition than me should start keeping an archive of every stupid thing like this that happens with TSA or air marshalls, then start passing it out to everyone we know.

The air marshall thing is especially funny. Let's put guns on airplanes, then, for all intents and purposes, alert everyone to exactly who has them. (i.e. the guys who are sitting up front and preboarded before everyone except the flight crew -- not too difficult to figure out).

Again, they wanded my bare feet because I refused to take off flip flops (by the way, they neither wanded nor scanned the flip flops).

Apparently we're on the lookout for WMD embedded into my skin.

my home airport is IAD as well, and they always mention I should take off my shoes, but i don't because I know they are okay...and I pass everytime.

Well i was transfering from international to domestic in the atlanta airport (after that 20 hour flight from jo'burg...ugh) and they guy said i had to put my food on this 'detector' to see if my shoe had metal in it....the dedector buzzed so i had to take off my shoes...this made no sense to me because i'm 100% positive my shoe has no metal in it. I swear i think that thing buzzes for everyone, regardless if there is metal in your shoe or not.

what got me irritated was the TSA guy shouting out "okay, who's the next person that has to go back to high school to understand what metal is" because some people had forgotten to take change, etc out of their pockets....it was mainly the tone of his voice....everyone is stressed, there is no need for that guy to act in the condensending manor that he was..

"In a mature society, 'civil servant' is semantically equal to 'civil master.'"

- The character 'Lazarus Long' in the Robert Heinlein novel 'Time Enough for Love'

Appropriate response: "how would you know what they teach in high school?"

You ever had them run through a x-ray and had that confirmed?

Just because they rang on that machine, doesn't mean it would have set off the WTMD. A lot of dress shoes have metal and those things and HHMD will pick it up no matter what, where a WTMD might pick it up but it won't be enough to set you off.

The fact is, you have the right to refuse. Washington even said this, but another fact is that airports across this country seem to want to punish people for not taking them off, even when they don't meet the profile. It's total BS and makes it that much worse for airports where the SOP is properly being followed because passengers will sometimes sit and question us in a line about why the other airport made them do it. Honestly, if any of you are one of these passengers, most the time it won't get you no where because we can't answer it truthfully because we don't work there.

Even I've felt this way before as a TSA screener. My airport doesn't yell at passengers anymore and thats great, instead the WTMD people tell folks what they need to do. But we constantly have people ask us, after getting the instructions, if they need to remove change. And most the time they've put their stuff through, so they grab another bin and hold up the line even more because of it.

Understand, screeners in a lot of airports are just as stressed, I can't go into detail but I know the stress level has gone up at my airport thanks to management and Washington in the last month. And when you constantly have to repeat something over and over again because passenger just refuses to take a little time and read a sign, it can get annoying.

The subject of "metal" isn't properly discussed until Inorganic Chemistry or Material Science, which are junior and senior level classes at most colleges that offer them.

I doubt the bellowing fool attended college, however.

You judged him too quickly! He was asking a serious question. He has to return to high school to find out and wants to know if he can car pool.

Since we are on the topic of metal.

One thing that really mystifies me is that I NEVER EVER take my watch off
yet and have never had it set the scanners off.
Yet they spend time screwing around people who have few coins in their pockets.
mike

They alarmed, you didn't. They had a larger net magnetic moment than you did is all...