In another thread, I mentioned that we have a brand new lane devoted to selectees, airport employees, persons with disabilities and aircraft crew. I was skeptical about it at first because it looked like we were splitting the checkpoint in two with a mini-checkpoint on one side and the main checkpoint on the other (and NO increase in manning!). Well, it seems that this new set-up is working well though it has its own drawbacks.

Let me re-describe how this new lane is set up. It really is, for all intents and purposes, a separate mini-checkpoint. It is contained inside a separate room that opens up at the back into the food court. I suppose that it was originally intended for another vendor/restaurant at the food court but was never contracted out. So this new lane is literally separated from the rest of the checkpoint by a wall and we have to go through a portion of the food court to access this lane.

Something that is beginning to grow into a pet peeve pertains to the flight crews. They can access the checkpoint through a special entry lane set up at the entrance to the checkpoint that allows them speedy access to the ticket reader who then refers them to the new screening lane. Many of the crew members love the new lane, and some have said because they do indeed feel guilty cutting in front of passengers. However, some crew members are proceeding from the ticket reader into the main checkpoint to one of the regular lanes. Why is this a big deal to me? Well, the way I see it, if they want to use one of the regular lanes, then they should wait at the end of the line along with the rest of the passengers. I consider it rude that they are essentially cutting in front of everybody else when they use the regular lane. Perhaps over time they'll make the adjustment and start using the lane set aside for them. Perhaps I'm being too picky; however, the main checkpoint is designed for regular passenger screening. I'll comment more on this later.

One of the nice things about this special lane, as it turns out, is that I believe persons with disabilities receive better service than they did previously. I'm not saying that they were subject to rude treatment before or anything along those lines. The new lane is configured with enough space to allow wheelchairs and carts through adjacent to the WTMD. Most people in wheelchairs have trouble walking as opposed not being able to walk. So now they can, if they choose, stand up, pass through the WTMD, and immediately be seated in their wheelchair which we wheel through the adjacent door, screen, and have waiting for them. Many wheelchaired passengers love the increased efficiency and hassle-free aspect of this new lane.

There are a couple of things that have taken me for a surprise, however. The lane takes up some of what used to be food court space. When we set up this lane, we used black room dividers to border off the part of the lane adjacent to the food court to offer privacy for those who undergo secondary screening on our side of the divider. The airport managment had us replace those black dividers with glass dividers. Their rationale is that they want passengers to see the food court in order to entice them to go there after screening. Well, first of all, a hungry passenger will either ask or look for a food court. Second of all, I'm sure the last thing people eating in the food court want to see is a bunch of people standing with arms and legs extended getting the Full Monty. And the last thing passengers being screened want is to get that fishbowl feeling as some yahoo in the food court chomps down on a burger watching them be screened.

TSA management isn't quite off the hook from my criticism. Yesterday was one of those days when we had a larger than usual passenger load and a larger than usual absenteeism. A few of the screeners were on scheduled vacation, which wasn't a problem, but I also had a couple who called out sick (one of them is a pregnant female getting very close to her due date), another one who had a medical emergency and yet another who was summoned to jury duty. We had overtime help to get us through the day; however, we soon reached a point when I was going to lose all my overtime screeners but still had a rather large passenger flow to contend with. So I shut down the special lane in order to consolidate my resources. You would have thought that I had just squated in the middle of the checkpoint and planted a huge stinky one in public. Airlines were complaining, managers were freaking out and my supervisor was caught by surprise at the reaction.

We talked about it later and reviewed my decision. Silly me, I was thinking about efficiency and reducing wait times by having more screeners available in the main checkpoint area as opposed to splitting my manpower into what amounts to two separate checkpoints with the larger one significantly reduced in manpower. The bottom line is that the new lane is a political football and is to remain open until it's time to transition to the late crew. I pointed out to my supervisor that after a certain point, we will have a long wait time by design not by lack of effort because I won't be able to move as many passengers through the main checkpoint without consolidating screeners from the other lane. He acknowleged this, to me it appeared as if he was frustrated, so I took him off the hook by saying my trademark, "no sweat...we'll figure it out and make it work, boss."

I may be reading too much into this, but I think one of the designed intents behind this new lane is to essentially put special screening out of public view. A sort of out of sight out of mind mentality. Could be wrong, but one of the reasons why there was such a fuss was because we went back to screening wheelchaired passengers and others with disabilities in the main checkpoint, and the perception was that this was slowing us down. (I checked the statistics for those hours...walk-thru numbers, passenger wait times, etc...and we were actually more efficient during those hours than we were before I shut down that lane...but I won't clutter this discussion with logic.) I can understand from a PWD perspective that these passengers may appreciate the privacy afforded in the new lane (that is, when the guy chomping down on the burger isn't looking). But it seems that this is one of those things that happens when politics take precedence over efficiency. Not the first time I've seen this happen, and certainly not the last.

Just some thoughts, observations and frustrations I thought I'd share, even if slightly OT.