I make a point to ask every time if I have to take off my shoes, and if I don't, will I be subjected to secondary screening? It has been a little more consistent in the past six months to a year. The reply I most often get is, "you may leave them on but we will have to subject you to more intense screening because we are not just looking for metal in shoes." I.e., they are looking for explosives. I used to complain to the hapless TSA agent about how their inconsistant policies are exactly what makes folks so upset at the whole process.

Sometimes, at the smaller or less busy airports, the TSA agents have actually looked at my shoes and let me pass through, which leads me to believe that other agents are just lazy and won't be bothered to check for a shoe "profile" and have all the shoes go through x-ray or secondary screening.

What type of explosive can an X-Ray find anyways that can not be found by the metal detectors? If they were swabbing every shoe for residue, it would be one thing...

It just seems weird, especially considering how sensitive the metal detectors are now.

Randomman

Travel Safety and Security - please follow it there

thanks

squeakr
MOD UAL

Yeah, no obvious need here in the US.

I doubt this guy would agree with you, though.

Yeah, it is. Of course, both times it was at Schipol after a hard redeye in Y on NW. And a bit less than ten years ago to boot. So it may not be all that accurate a memory.

Except for the part about Israelis driving on the sidewalks. That's a bit hard to forget when you have to dive into the nearest alleyway.

Sounds as if most posters are willing to undergo the Barefoot Dance of Coercion just in order to be able to get aboard a plane on a ticket they paid for.

No, not I. Never again. Not in this lifetime. I may be old but I ain't THAT dumb, yet. Never will grovel or be made a public example again. Rest of you? Be sure to greet your TSA agents appropriately. Enjoy those cattle pens and get as comfortable as you can there on the back of the bus.

Are you kidding me? Explosives themselves are not metal. They will not set off the WTMD. They are found either on the x-ray or with the ETD.

Amen, brother!

The only way they are found with the x-ray is if someone is thoughtful enough to add the other items that are needed to detonate them - namely wires, a blasting cap and possibly a timer.

The x-ray will indicate something dense is there. It will NOT indicate that explosives are present.

... and PAY for the privilege of being blackmailed...

Checkpoint x-rays do not detect explosives. The screener has to study the image and look for certain things that are consistent with improvised explosive device configurations. No matter what type of IED you have, they all have one common trait. To explain it another way, without violating SSI, every firearm has to have a trigger mechanism, a device that acts as a firing pin mechanism, a chamber to house the bullet itself and a barrel to launch the bullet through. Doesn't matter whether you're looking at a zip gun or Smith & Wesson pistol or M-16 rifle; all firearms have to have certain components in order to work. A similar principle applies to explosives.

The procedure is that you either submit your shoes for x-ray examination OR we will swab it for explosive residue.

Having said that, I believe TSA can scale back on its shoe examination policy and go to a random procedure (one out of every five, one out of every seven, one out of every ten, for instance) rather than inspecting each and every shoe. The reason I say this is because there has only been one incident of an attempt to use shoes as improvised explosive devices in the past four years. We can accept the risk of mitigating that threat with a random check as opposed to a mandatory check. Should there be any indication of an increased threat to aviation based on intelligence information (and not just a response to political rhetoric), then perhaps we can go to a mandatory check of all shoes until the "threat window" is closed, then go back to the random checks.

This is the difference between risk management and risk avoidance.

This is the challenge that I face as a Lead Screener: overcoming screener laziness. Most of my screeners do look at the shoes and make a call as to whether or not they meet the profile. Here's my problem: we've just had a new schedule change, so I now have new screeners to the shift with that same bad habit. I find myself having to re-train a new batch of screeners.

To my fellow screeners who are OSARPians: this changed my entire approach to screening shoes. I am more "liberal" about the shoe criteria. Unfortunately, it takes someone who is trained in OSARP to fully appreciate this. Sorry for the double-talk; but this has given me an entirely new perspective.

Really? Not true Spiff. You don't need the other elements. The x-ray doesn't indicate anything, ever. It only shows a pictuure. The operator knows what to look for. We may not know alot, but we know what a shoe is supposed to look like.

Do you believe that today there is a greater probability of an x-ray operator -- at the WTMD checkpoint-area -- catching explosives in the absence of the items listed by Spiff? Why?

Yes. I absolutely do think an x-ray operator at the checkpoint could catch explosives without the other components. Because we are trained to know how these things look on an x-ray. Not to mention some on the job experience. And thats really all I can tell you without risking my job.