nhcowboy

I should start by acknowledging that this went wrong from the get go, and a few simple corrections on my part would probably have prevented further problems. But despite knowing better, and having planned carefully, when push came to shove, I forgot some things I should have remembered.

The trip I'm about to describe took place the beginning of June. It was the first flight I've taken in at least 10 years - and my first "up close and personal" encounter with airport security. It's taken me this long to put pen to paper because . . well, I needed some time to calm down . . . okay, I needed a lot of time to calm down, and I'm still not quite there yet.

The round trip from MHT to SFO for myself and my son started with a last minute flight cancellation by United. They were kind enough to rebook us . . . with me leaving at noon and connecting through Dulles, and my 12-year old leaving at 11 am and connecting through O'Hare! Apparently the high-pitched squeaking noises I started making over the phone when I discovered this convinced the United reservations agent that she should do something. I don't know if her goal was to help me or dump me, but, in any event, she got us onto a Continental flight leaving MHT only minutes after our original United flight had been scheduled to depart.

And that's when I, in my delight at having escaped from United, made my first and biggest mistake: I forgot to print out our original boarding passes.

And when I tried to print out our Continental boarding passes, I discovered I couldn't. Because of the airline change, they had to be printed out at the ticket counter.

Well, now we have a problem. I'd planned to be first in line for screening when TSA opened that morning. Unfortunately, Continental's ticket counter wasn't scheduled to be open for another hour after that. Whether or not that would leave us time to get through security remained a mystery.

And that's when I made my second mistake - delaying our departure for the airport. Figuring I'd be standing around waiting for the ticket counter to open, I didn't leave as early as I'd planned. It was only after I arrived at the airport that I learned that the ticket counter was open quite a bit earlier than I'd been told. Only by then it was too late.

Due to the mix-up, my son and I didn't get to security until about 35 minutes before our flight was due to leave. The ticket agent assured us this wouldn't be a problem, despite the SSSS's boldly emblazoned on our boarding passes. After all, it's a tiny airport, it's early in the morning, and there are almost no people there. Yeah, right.

What I knew, and what the ticket agent didn't know, was that in addition to carrying our "handle with extra care" BP's, I was also carrying four litres of juice and water and (and this was the kicker) a note from my doctor saying I could carry them whether the TSA wanted me to or not. Oh, yes, and let's not forget that I also had with me an absolute conviction that h*** would freeze over and thaw again before either I or my son would walk through the WTMD barefoot or any TSO would touch my belongings without changing their gloves!

So I expected it might be a bit time consuming to get through security - but I really didn't expect it to be unpleasant. After all, it was early, there wasn't a crowd waiting to get through, and it was a small airport with a reputation for relatively quick and easy TSA experiences. Yeah, right.

So I put all our carry-ons on the conveyor belt and advise the TSO that I have both medical liquids - in a separate carrier - and a note. And am promptly ordered to remove all my belongings from the conveyor belt and just go stand at a table in the middle of the room. The supervisor meets me there and asks me where the liquids are. In a separate container, I repeat, and show him. I am then ordered to remove them. I do. I am then ordered to put them back. I do. I am then ordered to remove my kippie bag and put it in a separate bowl which he provides for me. I do. Then he needs to read the note. I am then told to get back in line by the conveyor belt (by now there is a line) and start all over again.

Finally get my things back on the conveyor belt and walk over to the metal detector. And then comes the inevitable question - why am I still wearing my shoes? Health reasons, I reply. So I get an SSSS pat down and a shoe wipe. My son gets the same treatment.

Meanwhile, they're anxious to start tearing apart my bags, but I've asked them to wait until I get there. And, oh yes, "could you please put new gloves on?" But when I get there, they don't start rummaging through my bags as I'd expected, they start dumping everything out. And they're doing this right at the end of the conveyor belt, right where everyone else's shoes and who-knows-what has been. And I say, "no, I'm really not comfortable with that, could you wipe off the counter first, please?" The TSO, who's actually being pretty nice about all this, cleans the counter - and then dumps everything from three of our four bags all over the counter. The fourth bag - with the liquids - has gone somewhere else. So while my underwear is getting scattered all over the place on one counter, the supervisor is on the other side of the room unpacking all of my bottles and telling me to open them. One at a time. Slowly. So he can hold a magic wand over each of them and know if they're going to explode. Open. Remove magic wand. Hold over bottle (about an inch above the open lid). Count to 10 (or 20 or 30, I'm not sure). Close lid. Move on to next bottle.

Yes, it's a bit tricky keeping my underwear from falling on the floor on one side of the room while opening bottles on the other, but this was foisted off on me as a time-saving maneuver. Which is important because the airline has already paged us, my son has run ahead up to the gate, and come back to report to me that they're boarding and if we're not there within two minutes, we're not going to get on the plane.

And then they page us again. My bottles have been okayed by now, and my son runs back to the gate to tell them we're really on our way, can't they please give us another minute? And they can't. And when he comes back, my big tough almost-teenaged son is in tears 'cause we've missed our flight and his only chance to visit his sister in a very long time is about to disappear . . .

And I lose it. My clothes are still scattered everywhere. The TSO who seemed so nice before is going through them with a fine-tooth comb. The supervisor is interfering in any and every way possible. And I lose it. I tell them exactly what I think of treatment that has brought my son to tears. So they call the police. Yeah, right.

I demand all their names and badge numbers. They of course refuse at first, 'til I point out that they're on their badges. In the end, they not only give them to me, they write them down for me - 'cause I'm still trying to get our stuff back in our bags.

Time through security: 45 minutes.

We leave security accompanied by two local LEO's who are both ignorant and arrogant, and are convinced that it's people like me who are responsible for everything that's wrong in our country. (For whatever it's worth, the feeling was mutual.)

They accompany me to the gate (where our flight is long gone) and wait. After a brief and unpleasant encounter with the TSA manager (whose name I also record), I learn that the only way we can get to SFO at anywhere close to our original destination time is to take a cab to Logan, and catch a flight from there. Cab fare = $120. Police escort to the curb = no charge.

After an extraordinarily comfortable and pleasant cab ride with a delightful Jamaican driver, we arrive at Logan just in time . . . but there's still security to deal with.

Time required to clear security at Logan - with all the same baggage we had at MHT, including my friendly but admittedly noncompliant attitude - two and a half minutes. Maybe three. I write down all of their names, too. Figured I should give credit where credit is due.

The flight we're supposed to catch? Delayed sufficiently that taking it would strand us at Newark. We end up connecting through Houston, where I land with a migraine. Arrive at SFO a whole lot worse for the wear, some 6 1/2 hours later than our originally scheduled arrival time, about $120 (plus tip) poorer, and missing a partially used box of kleenex. Because apparently the only thing more dangerous than a 54-year old woman with a bottle of water is a 54-year old woman with a box of kleenex.

According to my son, the last time he saw the kleenex, the MHT TSO was examining it, one sheet at a time. On second thought, I guess they can keep it.

END OF PART I (Yes, there is a part II. Apparently I'm the only person in the history of the universe who can't even arrive at an airport without getting in a fight with security. But if you want to hear the story of my return to MHT, you'll have to keep reading.)

oneofthosepeopleyouloveto hate

And to think, most of your hassles could have been avoided had you simply arrived at the airport a bit earlier.

Personal responsibility -- try it, you might like it!

essxjay

Sounds like a real hassle, nhcowboy. All due diligence and planning for your first flight in ten years unfortunately unraveled due to one miscalculation: screening time. Given the several exemptions you presented at the c/p -- medical liquids, insistence on "shoes on", etc. -- it's no wonder why you were delayed. But now that you've done your homework, it should be a smoother experience next time.

VideoPaul

I feel for ya, I really do..but as the other have said, just get to the airport EARLY! I usually get to O'Hare (I fly CO) two hours before scheduled departure, and by that I mean I'm parked (If I'm driving myself) and IN THE TERMINAL two hours before.

I fought the good fight with the TSA while the shoe removal was not required but after they made it mandatory I accepted it. I still hate it and always wear socks but there are some fights you can't win.

Here's where a lot of people are going to disagree with me: In the literally several hundred flights I've taken since 2003 when I took my current job, I have only flon with carryon only and nothing checked exactly TWICE and regretted it both times. I always check bags. The onyl things I carry on are my computer brief-bag and the $50k television camera I travel with. Everything else gets checked. No Kippie bags to worry about and if htey dump my bag out all that they have is a jumbled mess of wires, adapters and paperwork. And that's only happend a couple of times.

In all the times I travel through ORD, only twice have they done the complete bag dump on me. I also got it once in SEA, once at BOI and once at GTF. The guy at GTF seemed to have a system in place: Totally dump and touch EVERYTHING in the first bag he sees. As soon as he's dnoe with that bag which took ten minutes, the NEXT bag he sees gets the same thing. At GTF there's only a gate "2" in case gate "1" breaks, and gates "3" and "4" seem totally unnecessary, I got to sit at gate "1" which is 5 feet away fom the screening chute and watch the same guy do the same thing for 30 minutes. Why 30 minutes? Because after that there was NO ONE inline at 10 in the morning. This character came absolutely unhinged at an empty tube of blistex that I forgot I had in there underneath everything that hadn't seen the light of day for months if not a year. Credit whe it's due: The entire screening staff at GTF is about as NICE as you could ever possibly hope for.

The dude at SEA decided that since I had a lot of wires attendant to my computer and camera that he was going to, literlly not figuratively, upend the bag and shake violently after he had removed everything he could grasp and then ran it through the X-ray TWO MORE TIMES completely empty. The funny thing about this was that I had gotten there SO early (2-1/2 hours, I was flying AS) that it didn't matter, I still got to the gate an hour early. Every time this TSA nitwit told me he had to do "just one more thing" he looked at me looking for a reaction, and every time I didn't give him a reaction he found "just one more thing" again. I just stood there smiling what Mrs. Videopaul refers to as my "sickeningly seeet smile". Finally after 45 minutes at security they couldn't search me, my bags, my clothes, my shoes or my patience any more, I was released to repack my carryon (10 more minutes) and went to my gate.
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I did leave a whole bunch of things I ddin't want or need (little scraps of paper, pen caps, empty blistex tubes, a couple of little audio connectors I didn't need) right there all over the table and in the bin. They saw it after I was already 20 feet away and I heard the guy remark "What an a**hole! Look at all the junk he left! Why do they think they can treat this like their house?" The funniest part is that he really had no idea why I'd leave all that junk there after being there for just under an hour. He also doesn't understand why he is NOT an a**hole....it's becuase a**holes serve a purpose!

Because I'm top status with CO I always get to use the First Class lane with CO and, for now, NW. If I'm flying anyone else where I don't have status (DL, UA or AA) I get there 2-1/2 hours early. Also, I generally book very early morning travel. If I am traveling to the airport at a time when I wil be on the road during Chicago's legendary traffic, I leave MORE time. Usually I wind up with a lot of time on my hands which is why the President's Club membership is worth gold. But given load factors recently on CO--I haven't been on a less than FULL flight in a year--if I miss my flight I may not make it out that day.

As I mentioned, I usually book first flight out. I booked a flight that left at 7:00 AM instead of 5:35 AM once, and got to the airport proportionally later. I found out ni a hurry that die difference of just an hour and a half is amazing, when you arrive at 5:00 AM you walk into AMATEUR HOUR! At 4 in the damn morning, you have well seasoned, well prepared business travelers. Add 90 minutes and it's everyone who has never traveled or who hasn't flown since Reagan was in office. The difference was so huge that I walked out of security and right to the gate and they sstarted boarding less than 5 minutes after I got there.

So as much as I seems on its face to be a royal waste of time, the earlier you get to the airport, the happier you will generally be. If not today, then the next time you walk into amateur hour and burn 60 minutes you didn't think you neeeded all that time that you are now whiling away with a $4.00 bottle of soda in your hands.

--PP

nhcowboy

Noted in my original post, acknowledged, and explained.

I did expect the worst, and in fact planned for it. But, as already noted, the change of airline meant that, regardless of when TSA opened, I couldn't get a boarding pass until the ticket counter opened - which I was told would be less than an hour before I had to be at the gate. That piece of misinformation, and my reliance on it, clearly threw a wrench into the works.

Again, as noted in my original post, I screwed up by not printing out my original BPs. Had I done that, all would have been fine. We could have been in line waiting when security opened (as was my plan) and we wouldn't have been SSSS'd.

Well, yeah, you'd think . . . except that with all the same baggage (excepting the SSSS's BPs), we made it through Logan - a much bigger, busier and notoriously more difficult airport - in under five minutes. Ditto SFO.

Ticket agent at MHT said our SSSS'd BPs wouldn't be a problem - we'd be through security in 10 minutes or less. So the 45 minute circus isn't the norm. So what was the problem? Shoes on? That added a few seconds to the already necessary SSSS patdown. The problem was that I pissed them off by daring to assert my right to bring liquids through and to demand (politely) that they go through my things with clean gloves.

Keep in mind that I followed the exact same procedure at Logan that I did at MHT - kept the medical liquids separate, had my note in hand, and notified them of the variance before they even looked at my bags. At Logan, the supervisor read the note, looked at the bottles and waved us through with a shoe swipe. At MHT, we were pulled out of line, subjected to an entirely unnecessary pre-inspection, and then, in addition to the excruciatingly meticulous inspection of our carry-ons, had to watch (and assist) the supervisor to do a "magic" explosives test on each bottle.

Nonsense. If an SSSS screening usually takes about 10 minutes at MHT, you explain the extra half hour we were kept there . . . .

Nothing in our bags raised any eyebrows going through x-ray, by the way, and neither my son nor I alarmed going through the WTMD.

Wally Bird

No, 'officer'. Arriving earlier would not have avoided any of the hassles, it simply would have meant the TSA circus would not have resulted in a misssed flight.

Not the same thing at all, but I doubt you see that.

We Will Never Forget

45 minutes to get through MHT?

AngelMcD

That's exactly what I was thinking! I grew up very close to MHT and continue to use that airport whenever I go home. I have always encountered the most pleasant and helpful TSO's, including a notable one who helped me recover my driver's license that I had dropped into a heating vent on Christmas Day!

oneofthosepeopleyouloveto hate

That's easy to explain. The screeners at MHT followed the proper procedures, as far as I can tell, while the Logan ones were sloppy!

Smaller airports tend to be more by-the-book than larger ones, in my experience.

Maybe, maybe not.

When I get a hostile or difficult passenger, I'm VERY careful to follow the SOP to the very best of my knowledge. This isn't retaliatory by any means; I'm simply covering my behind in case the PAX decides to demand a supervisor or file some sort of complaint. If the videotape of the incident is reviewed, or I'm questioned, I'll have a lot more credibility with my managers if it's clear that I understood and followed the proper procedures. It also takes me a bit longer because as I work, I'm making mental notes on the situation, again in case my actions are called into question.

Let me just add that among the difficult passengers we deal with, there is a particular species I call the "attention-seeker." These folks (usually women) seem to have an almost pathological need to turn the screening experience into a cluster####. They're highly emotional, hostile and combative from the get-go. They seem hellbent on proving the rules that apply to other passengers DON'T apply to them, and they'll seek any loophole they can exploit to get the satisfaction they seem to need. They can't (or don't want to) take their shoes off. They want their homeopathic medication and cameras hand-checked. They claim to need various and sundry LGAs -- some highly questionable, either in nature or quantity -- for medicinal purposes. They "accidentally" put their boarding pass through the X-ray, which brings the line to a grinding halt while we retrieve it. They need multiple passes to get through the WTMD, and (before the rules were changed) usually ended up in the corral. I've had these types actually act DISAPPOINTED when they didn't set off the mag and warrant additional screening!

I don't see a lot of these folks -- maybe one or two a week -- but they're pretty easy to spot, and I know when I get one, I'm in for a hassle.

Mind you, I'm not talking about ordinary Kettles here -- these folks are way above and beyond simply clueless! I'm convinced they have some sort of personality disorder (histrionic? borderline?) and find the checkpoint an ideal place to manifest it.

I'll leave it up to others to decide whether the shoe fits in this case, but ... suffice to say, I've formed an impression.

nhcowboy

What a remarkable generalization!

At this point, after thinking about it, I'm not sure if I should feel flattered or offended to have been included. However, I was neither emotional, hostile nor combative "from the get-go." I'd heard nothing but good things about people's screening experiences at MHT and, although I expected it would take longer than the predicted 10 minutes, I wasn't expecting a nightmare and didn't go looking for one.

Your distinction between men who assert their rights (whom you don't mention) and women (whom you describe as pathologically disturbed) is intriguing. But I'm a lawyer and not a psychologist, so I'll leave that to someone else to figure out.

I would just suggest that you keep your employment options open. As more and more passengers learn to assert their rights, I fear you are going to find your current employment increasingly unpleasant.

Confirmation, anyone?

oneofthosepeopleyouloveto hate

NH,

The four liters of water was a really, really big clue!

In my experience, the majority of passengers who are simply hostile are men.

The pathological (IMO) attention-seekers, OTOH, almost always are women. In fact, I can't recall a single male passenger acting this way!

Curiously, a quick Google search suggests women are three times as likely as men to be diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (credit Mayo Clinic) and it appears histrionic PD also is more common among women.

Now mind you, this is all idle conjecture on my part! I find people interesting, even the ones who are a pain in the neck to deal with, LOL. It's why I enjoy my job ...

We Will Never Forget

I re-read your story again after your comments.

While I wasn't there, it seems you talked your way out of making that flight.

They way I see it:

TSA 1
You 0

Wally Bird

I have no doubt this was a 'retaliatory', 'punishment' or 'example' secondary. You know, the kind Mr. Hawley says his employees never do.

Doctor's note ? We don't need no steenkin' doctors' notes. OP definitely made the mistake of not being subservient enough. Failure to touch the forelock was a big clue.

doober

The following statements by OOTPYLTH are quite an indictment of the TSA:

We Will Never Forget

I don't condone it, but I can understand it.