Not sure if this belongs here, TravelBuzz or Special Interest travel. My husband, daughter and I are traveling from Eugene to either BUR or ONT at Christmas. If we fly out of EUG we will either fly United connecting through SFO or Alaska connecting through PDX. Here is my question. My husband is in a wheelchair so I like longer connections because it can take a while to load/unload him. Given the long connection time he is going to want to go outside to smoke. Can anyone suggest which security screening might prove to be the least stressful, PDX C Terminal or SFO UA Terminal. He always gets the full pat down screen because of the wheelchair (not to mention his should be empty bottle that he uses for a urinal). I will be entertaining our 3 year old during this time. I haven't been through SFO in years and was disappointed to learn no more smoking room in UA terminal. THanks for any input.

Oops, forgot to mention on the way out it will probably be connecting in the am (before 10:00) and not sure about the way back.

Mods, please move if this is not the right forum for this.

At SFO, you have the advantage of having both the AA and the UA checkpoint at your disposal, so if one is busy the other one may not be as busy.

That's true of PDX too -- if one line is really busy, you can just hit the other one. They're not at all far away, and it's not too terribly out of the way to go to the other line.

I have been given a very hard time when trying to use the UA line at SFO with an AA BP.

i've done it many times using aa at sfo to clear security for ua and in most cases, the i/d checker gave me a "you're pretty smart" . when i was questioned those few times, i simply told them that the lines at ua were too long and that was it.

No worries. You're right on topic. ^

Friday 1-ish, I had an AS flight, which boards after A/B/C checkpoint but I went through the D/E side as I had to buy some Oregon beer for Spiff at near D1. The only comment I got from the ID checker was, "Do you know about the concourse connector to the C gates?" ::knowing nod::

Just arrived home around 9:30 a.m. from an AS flight into at C7, and the A/B/C lines going in were the usual given the day and time -- long but moving, and all lanes were open.

YMMV, of course.

Thanks for all your thoughts. I had forgotten about the concourse connector at PDX. Sounds like they will be about equal in terms of convenience so hopefully I can still get the good UA fare otherwise we may have to drive to PDX anyway if AS fares stay high.