Ugh.
 

"Ugh."

That is the only thing I have to say today. I am bushed.

So this nice big line of thunderstorms decide to rip through the south today. One of them lands a big ol' squawk of hail and lightning and horrendous wind right on top of Huntsville International Airport.

Shortly after the x-ray machines and the WTMDs go down, the public safety guys (i.e.; the APo) make the decision to evacuate the concourse. They shanghai a couple of the TSOs to help move the passengers in the checkpoint at that moment in time down to the tornado shelter, and the rest of us hike out to another tornado shelter.

Ten minutes later, they give us the all-clear (a tornado was not, in fact, about to demolish the airport~) and we go back to the checkpoint. On the other side of the still-closed-and-locked gate are about 300 passengers wanting to get back into the sterile area.

Oh, my gawd.

Huntsville is a fairly small airport insofar as things go. Whereas an airport like LaGuardia might have three thousand people in line at any given time, they also have, like, a thousand screening lanes. We have two.

After four TSOs were yanked up from baggage screening (we're all dual-function screeners in HSV) to help, it took about twenty minutes to screen everyone back into the sterile area. It was a hard, butt-busting twenty minutes, though.

Ugh. Time to get the wife to rub my poor, aching feet~

Rescreening everyone would have gone much easier if there was no harassment about shoes, liquids, IDs, or BPs.

300 passengers in twenty minutes is pretty admirable. You definitely dont want to see checkpoints in some of those big city international airports though.

Oh, by the way:

The moral of the story is that, next week, when the TSA lineup on the homepage says however many checkpoint evacuations/breaches/checkpoint closures there were in that week, there's going to be at least one, and it was at HSV :D

Our sentiments exactly. More importantly, the sentiments of our FSD, who was on the floor during the controlled chaos.

I agree w/the above, as well as Spiff's statement above that :p

HSVTSO Dean: We are delighted you keep coming back for more at this forum. Sorry for the rough day you had. Happy Easter, or Passover, or whichever way you swing.

:cool:

Really? So TSA is capable of screening passengers without harassment? Wow... :cool:

Frequently. But nobody really ever, say, makes a thread post about just breezing through the checkpoint with no problem in the world~

It's not as interesting.

No, Spiff. It doesn't have any evacuated from the concourse. Because it was reason why the tornado warning near HSV. So everyone are running into the shelter to made sure everyone are safe & sound. So this is reason that you can barely hear the alarm sound is a warning the tornado alerted is headed this way. So I believe HSV doesn't have any minor damaged at all.

No. They doesn't have any a common problems at all. They will able kept the shoes on, BP, ID and etc.

Curious, did the ID/BP checking process slow things down considerably? Or, since the passengers were already screened, did the ID/BP checking process go faster (since the TSAer could see they already "approved" the BP)?

Sorry about your long day...some R&R will help you! :)

First, glad you're safe.

Second, 20 minutes is the norm for many airports.

first off, glad "you didn't get hit" ^. second-very good job on 300 pax in 20 minutes ^ and third-i'll make a point in next weeks' tsa stats update reference this thread ;)

Yeah, me too. I think he done it very good job for taking care with these passengers are running into the shelter. I think the weather will be goes away. I am being worried about your flight out of HSV. They didn't have any cancelled the flight out of HSV last night.