Another Encounter with the Friendly TSA: You've Got to Be Kidding

I'm not the kind of guy who responds well to someone who thinks everyone (which includes you and me) they encounter is a moron. I give you the TSA.

I do more than my fair share of traveling. You're welcome. But, I don't travel nearly as much as some of my A-list comrades, who basically live in planes and airports. Most of the carmaker-media events I attend are one or two night affairs. Unfortunately, the one-night events are becoming ever more common. When these take place on the west coast, I often spend more time in airports and on planes than I do at the actual event. I try to avoid these “one nighters” when I can. Put a couple of them back to back in the same week and a weekend doesn't provide enough time to completely recover.

I probably had between 60 and 70 encounters with TSA in 2019. I am pretty well versed in dealing with this agency. Ten-or-so years ago, I ponied up $100 for Global Entry, which includes TSA PreCheck. This streamlines my entry back into the United States after traveling outside its borders. (Something I rarely do anymore.) It also includes expedited PreCheck screening for all domestic flights.

To qualify for Global Entry, I not only had to stroke out a $100 check, I had to fill out an application, be cleared through a background check and spend a day driving to Atlanta where I had a one-on-one interview with a TSA interrogator, was finger printed, and photographed. PreCheck alone costs $85, but I believe involves all the same upfront security screening as Global Entry.

One problem with the PreCheck is, the airlines are allowed to randomly bestow PreCheck on passengers who haven't been through all of the advanced screening. Consequently, everyone in the PreCheck line is still treated with a certain amount of heightened suspicion by TSA personnel. All my efforts and money spent (I have had to renew my Global Entry once since having it for an additional $100.) really only guarantee that I will have PreCheck on every trip. It doesn't mean I'm considered less of a threat. The TSA personnel manning (womening, iting?) the screening lines at the airport have no way to identify people who have been through the Global Entry/PreCheck prescreening process from the airline-awarded random PreCheck passenger. There is absolutely no effort on TSA's part to identify those of us who are registered PreCheck with heightened clearance from those who aren't.

In fact, I'm not even guaranteed PreCheck because TSA will sporadically withhold it. I won't go into that here, but having paid for and survived the prescreening doesn't mean I will get PreCheck 100 percent of the time -- just most of the time.

There are a few major advantages to PreCheck: shorter lines, keeping on your shoes and belt, leaving everything in your carry-on and pretty much keeping everything in your pockets. Right on the TSA website home page it states, “With a 5 year, $85 membership, you can speed through security and don't need to remove your: (sic) shoes, laptops, liquids, belts and light jackets.”

On trips of more than one night, I check a bag. Because I shoot video on most carmaker trips, I have a tripod and some other gear that I pack in a rollerboard with my clothing. That gets checked. I carry on my backpack. Typically it contains a laptop, a kindle, a video camera, a still camera, my cell phone, a gallon plastic bag with batteries and chargers, and other assorted odds and ends. About half the time, a second laptop will be in there, as well. The only item in that backpack that I routinely remove and send through the x-ray separately is the bag of batteries. If left in the backpack, it will get the backpack pulled for a hand search everytime.

My annual Christmas celebration every year includes a journey to my sister's in New Mexico. I drive from Greenville, SC to Atlanta, drop my carmaker test car off at the valet in Park N Fly Plus, shuttle to the airport and pass through security. This year I traveled on the Sunday before Christmas. To minimize the number of miles the ticket cost, I booked a flight that left Atlanta at 2:15 p.m. My average drive time to Atlanta airport is two-and-a-half hours. I left my house at 9:30 for a leisurely drive to Atlanta. I didn't realize it was raining until I loaded my bags into my car. I would have left another 30 minutes earlier had I known. As it was, the drive required nearly three hours that day thanks to a wreck on I-85 about 60 miles outside of Atlanta.

When I entered the security line, I had an hour and forty-five minutes before my flight was scheduled to depart. Plenty of time, right? I have PreCheck. I had removed and left at home several of my usual backpack items for this “pleasure” trip because I didn't need them. I left behind the cameras and bag of batteries. I did have two laptops (I had some work to do.) and my Kindle.

Atlanta has adopted this ludicrous bin system at the security x-ray machine. There are a half dozen stations where passengers must take a bin for every different item they are sending through the x-ray. Once you've taken your place at one of these stations, you grab a bin from down below, place it in the staging area, put you bag or whatever in it and then wait for an opportunity to push it on to the conveyor belt. Once that bin is on is way along the belt, if you have another item, you repeat the process. If you are at one of the stations downstream you might stand and wait five minutes before the stream of bins provides an opening to shove your bin into. Somewhere, someone probably earned a promotion and a bonus for thinking up this better mousetrap; except, it is less efficient and more time consuming than the line moving up one person at a time, filling a bin(s) and putting it on the end of the conveyor. Even though it is clear this system is less efficient than the traditional way practiced at most airports, Atlanta has invested so much money into the new system, we'll be stuck with it for years.

From the time I stepped up to a station at the conveyor on that Sunday, it required almost 35 minutes for me to clear security. Some of that time was eaten up by the wait at my station to insert my bin on to the conveyor. Some of that time was also spent because this was apparently TSA training day. The person operating the x-ray was obviously training. He paused at every bag, staring at the x-ray screen as though he were participating in a “Where's Waldo” tournament. The line was barely moving. Finally my bag moved into the x-ray machine and I cleared the passenger x-ray. I stood on the other end for at least five minutes before my bag exited the x-ray machine and another five minutes before it moved far enough down the conveyor that anyone could get to it. When it got there, it was pulled off the conveyor for hand screening.

As frustrating as it is, bags being pulled for no real reason does happen. The problem here was, the genius watching the x-ray monitor was having one out of every three bags pulled. The bags selected for hand searching were stacked up like cord wood. When a TSA person finally got to my bag, he pulled out one of the laptops, scolding me that according to regulations, if you have two laptops, one of them must be removed.

“Since when?” I asked. Thinking perhaps this was a new regulation and looking for some clarification.

“It's always been that way,” was the response.

“I beg to differ,” I said. “This is far from the first time I've traveled with two laptops and it's never been an issue.”

“That's the way it's always been,” he persisted as he rifled through the rest of my bag with a Delta 2 Million Miles tag waving in his face. This obviously wasn't my first rodeo.

He took my bag and the now-removed laptop back to the x-ray for a second run through. Five minutes later both items exited the x-ray. At which time, my bag was pulled for a hand search again. WTF? I about popped my cork.

I attempted to get the attention of one of TSA bag searchers to get my bag, which had already been hand searched, into the front of the line. No luck. I stood helplessly as four or five bags were searched ahead of mine. When my bag reached the front of the line, the same TSA clown got it again. “I'm not getting this,” I said, “this bag has been searched. You searched it.”

“Well, it's going to get searched again,” he responded.

“I have a flight to catch.”

“So does everyone else here,” Captain Obvious replied.

“Yeah, but their bags haven't been through the x-ray twice and searched once,” I said as calmly as I could at this point.

With that, he pulled out my Kindle. “Only one electronic item can go through the x-ray,” he chided

“You guys are now considering a Kindle the same as a laptop?” I asked, reacting to what was also a new development.

“We always have.” was the only response I received as he handed me the laptop that had gone through by itself the last time. He carried my bag with the remaining laptop, as well as my separated Kindle back to the x-ray and ran them through again. This time everything came out unmolested. Tick-tock. Thirty-five minutes. Wow, this PreCheck thing is quite the deal.

How many of you reading this have been in a PreCheck line and heard a TSA wonk yell, “Everything stays in your bag.” I've probably heard it nearly every time I've flown since PreCheck began. What in the world changed since the last time I flew two weeks earlier? I wondered.

Fast forward to my flight back to Atlanta on December 27. In the PreCheck line in Albuquerque. I get to the conveyor, grab three bins and commence removing the Kindle and one of the laptops from my backpack. “Leave everything in your bag,” the TSA drone instructed.

“Yeah, but I have two laptops and a Kindle in here,” I said.

“Doesn't matter,” he replied. “This is PreCheck and everything stays in your bag.”

“You should tell TSA in Atlanta that,” I answered.

“Everything stays in the bag for PreCheck,” he reiterated, as though I hadn't said anything.

“You should tell TSA in Atlanta that,” I repeated. “They said only one electronic item could remain in the bag. I had to send a laptop and the Kindle through separately.”

“Every airport has its own rules,” he said as I turned and walked through the metal detector.

Every airport has its own rules? What? How does that work? Anyone who travels with any frequency understands the TSA is more about show than substance. I get that, but every airport has its own rules? Why have TSA at all. Why not just have every airport hire a bunch of mall cops? Why even put on a show of having any sort of national standards?

The culprit causing half of the stress involved in flying today is the TSA. The Disney World-like lines, the constant shouting of instructions, the bag hand searches, pat downs and so on. At least they could make some effort at consistency. There is no reason in the world the security procedures in Atlanta shouldn't be exactly the same as in Salt Lake City, San Francisco or Greenville/Spartanburg.

And, of course, making any protest beyond a mild question or two will result in being ushered off into room somewhere, cooling your heels as your flight departs. Is this a great country or what.