Airline security - get 'em grandma and oops wrong plane

[hollyL]

So I took a trip last week and had some airport security experiences. The line at RDU was soooo long to catch the terrorist. While I was in line I befriended a nice old lady and her 10 year old grandson (he didn't have a bag). After a long, long time we reached the 'look at my id/ticket' lady. This seemed to go OK. 10 feet later I show my id/ticket again. The ticket/id looker lady was clearly not charmed or humored with my "can't you pick someone who isn't going to miss their flight?" comment. Apparently since I was talking to the nice lady and her grandson they thought we were together and we were all asked to go to the 'special search' area. We were all told to go to the "red line" and wait...and wait...and wait. The old lady started to get a bit, let's say cranky. She decided to say something about us standing there so long; they didn't like this either. Then the security guard tried to take her grandson to the 'secret security room'. She no happy about that. She proceeded to say "I'll be *******ed if you are taking my grandson anywhere! He's just a kid and you aren't going to scare him like that!". There were other curse words but I was laughing to hard to remember them. Finally, they searched my stuff and swung my underwear on the stick and I was on my way. Pain in the butt but I'll live with it - poor kid though.

Now comes the interesting part...

We were on a small plane. I can't remember the type but it had 1-seat-aisle-2 seats setup. 5 people who were clearly together got on the plane. It appears that only one teenage girl could speak any English. This is important only because they really couldn't communicate with anyone on the plane or the flight attendant. So they keep wondering around looking for their seats I suppose and they started to all kinda raise their voices - you know like they were arguing. Then a few just took a seat and 2 were still arguing. So the flight attendant walks up and tried to talk to the young girl. Oops! They don't have tickets to this flight! Probably why they couldn't find their seats. Sure glad they patted down that 10 year old, his grandma and displayed my undies to the entire security line!

This is a good one too. Standing in the HUGE line in Vegas there is a sobbing woman walking through the security line and very politely explaining that her father just died and she needed to get to the funeral. Everyone - I mean EVERYONE - had absolutely no problem with her "budging" to the front. So the a-hole security guard starts yelling at her that she needed to go to the back of the line. Several hecklers (I among them, of course) started to shout..."just let her go her father died for Christ's sake!" etc. The woman could hardly stand she was crying so much, I felt so sorry for her. So they shoved her back and again everyone let her ahead. Now repeat story again 2 times. Finally everyone in the line, there must have been 75-100 people, walked out of the line and stood on the wall until there was no line and then she past. God bless Americans!

I understand the need for security but is denying a woman passage to see her father's funeral really the intent? She wasn't trying to get past security just move a little quicker through the line. Do they really need to scare a 10 year old boy who doesn't even have a bag? What kind of sense is this?

Finally, one thing I don't understand. When you take off they say "portable electronic equipment could interfere with navigational instruments aboard the aircraft". Why the heck don't the terrorist just load up their carry-ons with diskmans and gameboys and just turn them all on? Seems like an invitation for trouble to me!

[johnb]

First off, they're government employees. They enjoy harassing people that work in the private sector and have productive employment, something many of them are incapable of securing. It was totally, 100% a "judgment call" on the part of the idiots when it came to rifling through your bags and displaying your underwear to the crowd. They have no class and less sense. If they had separated you from your bags there's a good chance they'd have stolen anything of value. We had Achmed Bin Blowin Shi'iteup on TSA staff in Chicago to deal with. He thought kids and geezers were prime security threats as well but fellow Muslims got waved right through. It wasn't a group of Presbyterians that blew the WTC up. Nor was it Jews, regardless of the Islamofascists fantasies to the contrary. It wasn't Buddhists or Taoists. It was Muslims but it would be politically incorrect to call a duck a duck.

Second, if those security guards are like certain government employees that kid they hauled off the back rooms may have gotten a disturbing biology lesson. If I had been there I'd have made comments in a very loud voice that the boy should not allow the guards to touch or fondle his private parts or otherwise molest him. If they want to be creeps make them feel like the creeps they are, they should be exposed to public scorn and ridicule.

I went through customs in Chicago last month coming back from Mexico and the AHoles didn't even look at my customs declaration. I put on there that I was bringing contraband into the country and they failed to look at the paper they stamped allowing me in. Dumb@$$e$. A repeat of 9/11 will occur due solely and complete to incompetant government employeees and their slavish devotion to PC group think.