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America's airport security system has plenty of flaws. Should travelers feel safe?
 Airport Security Q&A
Airplane Horror Stories
At the Airport: What to Expect
 Share Your Airport Security Stories!
I'm going to complain about airport security -- but not for the reasons you might expect.
 I'm not going to complain about slow lines, about airline agents getting back at us by slapping secondary security check codes on our boarding passes, about government-approved locks getting cut off anyway by government agents, about rules that changes and change back and then disappear. No, I'm not going to complain that airport security is too hard on us -- I'm going to complain that it's too easy.
A recent Philadelphia-Boston flight on US Airways is a case in point. Upon arrival at the airport, I was ushered to a check-in kiosk by a US Airways agent. I swiped my credit card, went through the bag check and check-in process, and reached down to to pull the flimsy boarding pass gingerly from the machine slot. A porter called my name, checked my boarding pass against my luggage tag and took my bag, and I was on my way.
I headed for the security checkpoint, where a TSA agent took a long look at my driver's license, then my boarding pass. "You can put your license away. You will not need it again," she said, and sent me on my way to the security machines. I passed through relatively quickly, glanced at my gate number on the boarding pass and made a quick stop at the gate to see if the flight status was posted. It was -- for a 10:30 flight to West Palm Beach! I checked my boarding pass, and sure enough it said West Palm Beach -- for traveler Joseph Wagner. I had passed through two different checkpoints with someone else's boarding pass.
I went to a nearby US Airways counter where an agent graciously printed the correct boarding pass. She was as surprised as I was that I had gotten that far.
Then, on the way home, I had a different but no less troubling experience. Leaving Boston through US Airways' small terminal at Logan, I headed for the security checkpoint (with the correct boarding pass this time) to find the tight security passageway in complete disarray: chaos would be the right word for it. Folks with tight connections were directed to "speed lanes," which actually went slower than the "normal" lanes. Half-toppled card tables led to a security belt that was almost impossible to get to behind a supporting beam. There were no plastic buckets to be found, and the lines to the checkpoints looked more like a rugby scrum than a secure environment.
 Instead of posting an agent out front to give instructions and create some order, TSA agents were running into and piled on top of one another on the other side of the screening gates, bellowing orders to passengers in line from 20 - 30 feet away. To top it off, apparently security was a bit tighter on the way home, and the agents were opening bag after bag, rescreening half the passengers, more noisily all the time. They seemed to be making it up as they went along. The exit from Fenway after Game 6 of the ACLS the night before was more orderly -- and this is supposed to be Homeland Security!
Immediately on the other side of security was a food court. Whereas passengers are typically asked to clear out of the security area, here were people eating egg and cheese on an English muffin just 15 - 20 feet from the magnetic machines. And all this was taking place in Logan Airport; given the airport's role in the September 11 attacks, you'd think they might have it together here at least.
This doesn't seem to be the case at Logan -- or anywhere else for that matter. All of this occurred on the weekend after the TSA revealed that fully 75 percent of undercover agents smuggling fake bombs in their carry-on bags were able to pass through security at LAX.
The TSA counters that the report is misleading, as it is based on data that is two years old, but I could tell them that just two weeks ago I had bags on a Boston flight and would have been able to board a West Palm Beach flight, and no one would have guessed otherwise despite having eyeballed all my papers not fewer than twice during my passage from parking lot to boarding. And I wasn't even trying!
To make matters worse, I know I'm not the only one. Half the people in my office have reached the gate only to discover prohibited items in their carry-on bags; in one case the person had a bottle of water in a jacket pocket. And recently, over 100 people with false ID's were wrongly allowed access to employee-only areas of Chicago's O'Hare Airport -- a clear failure of the screening process for airport employees.
Let's step back now and give credit where it is due; the TSA ran these tests themselves, proof that they are working to identify weaknesses before someone else does, which is definitely the correct way to proceed. And screeners are human, just like the rest of us, so a few mistakes are inevitable.
However, for Logan to have a security area that looked worse than my basement before our last yard sale is inexcusable. It's difficult enough for even a well-organized security force to catch terrorists; when TSA agents aren't even able to get out of each other's way at a major airport checkpoint, the task becomes even more challenging. My kid's Halloween parade at daycare was more organized and orderly.
So while we're worrying about water bottles and belts, people with fake bombs and mislabeled boarding passes are roaming around the food courts. If the endless hassle of getting through an airport didn't do it already, that will take your appetite for travel away.
So this is a plea for airport security to get better -- not tougher, but tighter; not more aggressive, but more effective. Rather than build the fence higher, thicker and with more barbed wire, fix the holes right in front of our faces.
 Certainly the problem is not funding; airport security has spent money hand over fist since 2001. Passengers could help, too; after the better part of a decade of participating in Extreme Airport Screening, many passengers still have to be told to put their shoes in a bucket, remove their jackets, put away cell phones and do the other no-brainer stuff you'd do in preparation for walking through a metal detector.
And at airports, whether it be TSA staff, airline staff, airport staff or all of the above, tidying up your work area and providing some guidance as passengers arrive at checkpoints would go a long way toward ensuring that fewer mistakes are made. Any person working in the midst of this kind of chaos is going to miss a few details, but the whole system relies on catching those same details -- it's not like the bad guys wear stockings over their heads, Nixon masks or some other Hollywood "bad guy" clue. At the very least, make it look like you could at least run a decent Halloween parade.
Have a security slip-up story of your own to tell? Send it to Traveler's Ed and we'll post the best of them. Note that clarity and brevity will make it much easier to post your stories.
Go Anyway,
Ed Hewitt
TravelersEd@aol.com
Features Editor
The Independent Traveler
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