This should read
When jumpseating, are we required to have a boarding pass from the ticketing counter in order to clear security, if we have a valid SIDA badge?
Like I said there are plenty of valid complaints that can be leveled at the TSA, we don’t have to go after incorrect ones.
Speaking as part of the self loading baggage that you haul around I am with you 100% when you want to talk about inconsistencies in TSA procedures. They can be all over the map. I don’t fly as much now as I did before I left my last job, but with about 750,000 miles, I have seen my share of strange things at checkpoints.
In Florida that won’t make any difference.
A few years ago I drove down to Florida from New Mexico and flew back. I had one small suitcase I checked it at the curbside check ‘point’ , the guy said “we have to search it” so it was searched.
All I had as ‘carry on’ was my leather jacket, out of all the people standing in all the lines in that place I was ‘randomly’ picked by the ‘computer’ to be taken off behind a screen and searched ,all my pockets and gone over with that hand held metal detector .
I had nothing ‘illegal’ on my person or in my suitcase or in my black leather jacket. I had my picture ID handy and my ticket had been bought online 4 days before the day of my flight.
After those nuts all had gone though all my ‘stuff’ and checked or carry on they then started asking a bunch of real dumb questions about where in ‘Mexico’ was I going to or was from,
When I pointed out to them it was New Mexico the state between Texas and Arizona , they relaxed and allowed me to go back to the end of the line they had taken me out of 3/4 of a hour earlier.
It didn’t seem to register with any of them nuts that my ID is a United States ‘State issued’ driver license or that my skin tone is ‘fish belly white’ with green eyes and lt. br hair or that English is my first and only language.
Sometimes it’s not the TSA whose utter incompetence leaves me wondering how it is they manage to breathe unassisted. Friday, flying DEN to PIT, which thanks to US Scareways is not a non-stop, involved the most idiotic gate agents I have ever seen in my life.
The plane is parked at the gate, with the crew already on the plane getting things nice and ready for all the passengers who wanted to get wherever they were going, but the gate agent can’t seem to figure out what to do. Boarding time comes and goes, and fifteen minutes after that she moves from the desk by the door to the one located out in the seating area. Then she starts making announcements about boarding passes and how everyone who didn’t have one should come see her. Since I’d eaten my lunch right there at the gate, I know that she has been there for an hour prior and had not suggested anything about boarding passes to the standbys. Ah well. Ten more minutes of that, and she is on her way over to the door next to the jetway to explain to us what preboarding is. The lady in the wheelchair, I’m quite sure, already knew.
Finally, time to board. We’re 20 minutes past boarding time, which means 10 minutes from scheduled departure time. That’s usually when the door closes and nobody else can get on the plane, but thanks to our gate agent it’s right about the time first class and high mileage people get on. I go to my seat and strap in. Forty five minutes pass, and I keep seeing the gate agent walking up and down the aisle of the plane. Seems she let on some people that she shouldn’t have. People who didn’t have boarding passes, and people who had passes for a different flight. It takes another ten minutes to get two people off the plane because they were on the wrong plane, then oops, five more because they forget that they also need to take their carry on bags with them!
There we sit, parked at the gate, door shut and jetway pulled back, while the gate agent holds the telephone up to her ear and stares open-mouthed at the plane for another five minutes. Finally, the pilot begins to taxi the plane out toward the runway, where we are now 11th in line because we missed our assigned takeoff time. The pilot explains that due to the ‘many screw ups by the gate crew’ we will now have to wait another 30 minutes for a take off time but he will try to fly faster so that people have some chance of making their connections.
I had to run to make my connection, which began boarding before my first flight landed. I made it, just barely, when had it not been for the stellar performance of the gate crew in DEN, I could have stopped to piss and bought a drink before getting on the plane. Cause no way am I paying two dollars for a can of Coke.
I finally bought about 5 of the travel size Tom’s of Maine from Drugstore.com and keep them specifically for travel ( spearmint here, other flavors available. In case you’re still a Tom’s of Maine user.
I’m sitting in the Lansing, MI airport. Went throught TSA a while ago. TONS of blue shirts around, no travelers but myself.
I walk up to the podium to have my ID and boarding pass examined. The young man standing there had been talking to a few of his colleagues as I approached. I handed him my stuff. He looked at me and said, sniggering, " Uh, we were talking about… security stuff. " And he grinned. And marked my boarding pass. And handed it back.
Buncha fucking yahoos. And I’m supposed to feel safe. Safe ??? Please.
I don’t get it. Did they all have their pants unzipped or something?
Who said they were even wearing pants?
As fun as any of the above would have been, the only answer that will not get you the alien abduction treatment at 6 AM is: “My keys.”
Not TSA related, but in the same ‘English is my only language, but I speak it like it’s my third’ vein: Last week I accidentally handed the wrong boarding pass to a gate agent who was directing a mixed group of travelers onto 2 different planes parked next to each other. She pointed me at the correct plane (50% chance…) but then chased after me, snatched the pass from my hand and pointed at it while shouting “Ah-whoa’a-ah-nuh-wuh” three times in rapid succession. I realized my mistake and produced the correct pass. I now realize she may have been doing an impression of Charlie Brown’s parents attempting to pronounce the state fish of Hawaii.
Oh, yeah. I may think it, it may take me a moment to control myself, but I’m not that stupid to say something out loud that wasn’t the expected answer. But maybe the person didn’t actually know what keys were? Not entirely implausible given the caliber of people working in such positions.
Does it ever occur to anyone that some of the stupid and irritating questions are asked in order observe your reaction? Certainly, there is the possibility of pathetic stupidity on the part of the TSAgent, but the flip side could be that they’re bored and like to verbally poke the captive audience.
Not that I approve… just a thought.
And my reaction if such as stupid question was posed to me would indicate what? That I thought the question was stupid? That I’m a terrorist?
If all they are doing is ‘poking’ a captive audience then they should be fired. I don’t abuse them and I expect the same in return. Any time they are unsure about what is in my bag, I help them sort it out. Asking me what that thing that looks like a toothbrush is, is just stupid. It’s a toothbrush. Don’t waste my time and I won’t waste theirs.
Oh yeah. Pretty much every time I go through LGW I have to bite my tongue. Seriously, how hard can it be for the daft pillock manning the x-ray belt to figure out that rather than standing by the x-ray machine handing out trays and then shoving them in the machine, it might be an idea to make the odd foray down to the far end of the belt and drop of a stack of trays? They spend thousands putting in extended roller-tables and longer belts, and 90% of the space is unused because the goobers in charge won’t distribute trays until you are within arms-reach of the x-ray. Morons. My one consolation is that the security-chumps in the UK are like little babies, still dreaming of being in the TSA when they grow up. The day they fledge is the day I stop flying completely.
Rick - if you’re willing to gamble on the security staff being fully up-to-date on the ‘approved’ list and following it correctly, you are a braver man than I. Unless its something I’m 100% sure will get thrown away with nothing more than a surly grunt, I leave it behind.
Hence my carry-on contains a larger than allowed deodorant (1 confiscation in about 15 trips) and toothpaste (no confiscation so far), but I swapped my safety razor for a shaver. Also, I very rarely bother with all the ziplock baggie, and other than the one lady in Frankfurt who pulled my deodorant, no-one has ever batted an eyelid.
So here am I, knowingly flaunting the regulations every single time I travel, with no consequence so far other than one delay of approx 30 seconds and the loss of a very few bucks, whereas I know people who have had perfectly ‘legal’ knitting needles, nail scissors and so on confiscated, with all sorts of hoo-ha and drama. Marvellous, isn’t it?
Right, after I went through all of what I went through, they called me about three months later as well and asked me if I would like to accept the job offer at Dulles Airport in Va. I thought that was weird. But…that’s how it was done. This was in 2002.
When I fly out of Seattle I actually hope and pray to get the big ‘S’ on my boarding pass. That means they pull you out of line and give you a thorough once over. So instead of waiting in that line that stretches out for miles, I get pulled to the front and am through security in 10 minutes or less. But, YMMV and all that…
I noticed you were back, too. Good to see you around here again!
thanks robby.
The problem also with all this American TSA crap is that it is forced on foreign airports or they are not deemed safe by the USA authorities. And foreign countries have no shortage of idiots of their own supply so you get similar situations all over the world. Airlines and airports inside secure zones will provide you with metal knives which would be confiscated by security. Does that make any sense?
They make you take off your belt because there is a chance that it might make the metal detector go off. Except that I expressly use a belt with a bucle that is non ferrous so I do not have to take it off. But no matter how I explain it there is always some idiot who makes me take it off because “that’s the rule”. well, fine, that is the rule. And my rule is that I am going to make a nuisance by being slow and playing dumb and choosing which languages I may or may not understand (unless I am in a hurry myself) in the hopes that my small contribution will add to the numbers who are pissed off by the whole thing and maybe common sense will begin to prevail sometime in the near future.
And for all of us stuck behind you in line, we appreciate your stand even if we may be late for our next connection because of it. Thank you, thank you so very much. Because without you to delay us even further it would never occur to anyone else that the whole process was a massive waste of time and a massive pain in the ass. Surely because I am then delayed it will make those searching us move all that much faster seeing the pissed look on our faces behind you.
A question: Does anyone know why you have to put liquid items into a ziplock baggie? Because items may spill when handled by the monkeys of the security check?
Dick.
Thanks. Just doing my little part to resist the stupid rules and hope they are soon removed.