The combination of TSA budget cutbacks (way to go with that Homeland Security thang, Congress!) and anticipated summer travel spikes means that security will be short-handed at DIA.
Travelers will be encouraged to put metal items, phones and pagers into clear plastic bags before they arrive, so they’ll be easier to check through security.
That’s great. After all, all those metal things — belt buckles, change, shoes, cell phones, PDAs, pagers — nobody actually needs those things, so it will be a simple matter to just pack them away in a little clear plastic bag, just for the convenience of airport security.
Feh. That’ll all make everyone feel better about flying on their vacation.
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My last TSA experience was so wonderful that I would prefer to drive rather than fly the next time I go to California. Yes, that’s right. I’d prefer to spend two days in the car rather than fly to the west coast.
The TSA agents in LA trashed my suitcase and pretty much wrecked a nice tie by not getting it flat again when they closed the case. I asked them to lock the bag when they were done and they said they would, but they didn’t.
My biggest gripe is that they actively seek to prevent you from seeing what they’re doing when they have your suitcase open. That’s not a good sign in my book. Even bogus third-world-country baggage searches usually allow you to observe while they search your bag for ‘contraband.’I had put a valuable item I had inherited from my grandfather in my suitcase, and I was worried that it would disappear during the search. It’s not replaceable due to the family history attached to it, and I couldn’t carry it aboard due to the security restrictions. So I sat and worried about whether or not it was stolen during the duration of my flight from LA to Denver.
I also have problems with the shoes-off business and the expectation that the travelling public will make things convenient for TSA rather than TSA being clever enough to figure out an efficient way to do their security checks without inconveniencing the public. The TSA agents seem to me to have a bad attitude and the wrong way of looking at the world. To them, everyone is a terrorist. Everyone is guilty until proven innocent in an airport these days, and we should all just shut up and be thankful that they are there to ‘protect’ us, regardless of the inconvenience that it causes and regardless of the potential invasion of our privacy.
Travelling was becoming less and less fun even before the TSA started “upgrading” the security, and now it’s crossed the line into unpleasant for me.
I will say that, in general, I’ve had pretty positive experiences with the TSA folks — certainly in comparison to the private security schnooks they had beforehand. The one exception to this is at LAX, where the TSA people have been uniformly unpleasant, delaying, and unhelpful. Every single time. Feh. But elsewhere, particularly here in Denver, I’ve been pretty pleased with them.