Thread: Airports say security checks going smoothly UPDATED

Airports say security checks going smoothly

By Alan Levin, USA TODAY

Airports reported few hangups at security lines Tuesday as travelers endured more rigorous searches and the air travel system geared up for the weekend.

"It's been a very smooth process today," said Katena Carvajales, spokeswoman at Atlanta Hartsfield International Airport, the world's busiest.

Hartsfield expects to handle 1.7 million passengers through Monday, Carvajales said. So far, she said, the crush of people hasn't led to long waits at security lines. Nor have there been any protests. The average wait at checkpoints there was less than 10 minutes Tuesday.

The Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) introduction of more thorough pat-downs — which includes a swipe of genital areas through clothing — has prompted a strong negative reaction from many travelers. Less than 3% of passengers receive them.

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Other passengers are upset at the growing number of body scanner machines that peer through clothing in search of weapons and explosives. The machines capture an image of the body, which is viewed by a TSA officer in a private room and then discarded.

Loose-knit groups on the Internet are urging travelers to boycott the body scanners at airports today, which would force the TSA to perform more of the time consuming pat-downs than normal. TSA Administrator John Pistole said that he's concerned that the boycotts could trigger delays.

Since the procedure went into effect at all airports Nov. 1, the TSA has received about 2,000 complaints from passengers about either the new searches or the body scanners, Pistole said Tuesday. About 35 million people have taken flights during that time, he said.

Despite the threat of protests and a handful of high-profile cases of outraged travelers, airlines haven't seen a noticeable increase in flight cancellations or falling reservations, said David Castelveter of the Air Transport Association, the trade group for large carriers.

Christopher Bidwell, security chief at the Airports Council International, said the system was functioning well.

"Airports have not reported that there are either significant lines or significant issues having to do with screening of passengers," he said.

There's been a 3.5% increase in passengers so far this holiday compared to a year ago, but waits at TSA checkpoints have remained steady, the agency reported. Of the passengers who are selected for body scanners — still a minority of travelers — less than 1% have asked to have a pat-down instead, the TSA said.

Following a decision last week to streamline screening for uniformed pilots, the TSA announced Tuesday that uniformed flight attendants would be able to avoid the more aggressive pat-downs and the body scanners. Attendants must still go through metal detectors and must prove with two forms of ID that they are airline employees.

http://www.usatoday.com/travel/flights/ ... 4_ST_N.htm

BUT

'Big mess' of weather heads for central USA

Updated 16m ago
By Doyle Rice, USA TODAY

The vicious storm that hammered the Northwest and Rockies with blizzard conditions Tuesday will move into the central USA today. Snow, ice, rain and wind are expected to wreak travel havoc across the upper Midwest, while the central Mississippi Valley and central Plains could see severe storms, including tornadoes.

"We're expecting a big mess today over the middle of the country," says Weather Channel meteorologist Mark Ressler. Both air and road travel will be affected, he says, with airport delays likely in Minneapolis, St. Louis, Chicago and Kansas City, Mo.

The worst of the wintry weather should be in the northern Plains. "Wednesday will be a brutal day across the Dakotas, especially North Dakota," Ressler says.


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Freezing rain and sleet are also possible from Nebraska to Wisconsin.

To the south, where the air is warmer, heavy rain and thunderstorms are forecast. The Storm Prediction Center has posted a risk for severe thunderstorms today; high winds, hail and tornadoes are all possible in portions of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas and Missouri.

As the storm moves into the central USA, the worst of the weather in the West will start to wind down, reports Ressler. By the time the snow eases later today in the Sierra, Cascades and northern Rockies, most spots will have picked up anywhere from 1 to 3 feet of snow.

The East and South should be mostly dry today, but strong winds in the Northeast could lead to airport delays in Boston and New York City, says Ressler, while low clouds might affect the Southeast, including the world's busiest airport, Atlanta.

For Thanksgiving and Black Friday, the worst of the wintry weather will be over, reports Ressler, with only some light snow expected in the Pacific Northwest and along the Canadian border in the northern Plains, Great Lakes, and northern New England. However, rain will make for a lousy Thanksgiving Day in a corridor from western New York, through the Ohio Valley and into the Lower Mississippi Valley and Texas.

Rain and snow showers with temperatures in the mid-40s are forecast Thursday in New York City for the 84th Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, according to the National Weather Service.

East Coast shoppers seeking bargains on Black Friday will dodge raindrops from Maine to Florida, especially in the morning.

The return trip home over the weekend will be much better for travelers, Kessler reports. Except for the weather-battered Northwest, "Saturday and Sunday look fine," he says.

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/storms/ ... 4_ST_N.htm

Airport protest never takes off, few delays seen

(AP) – 3 hours ago

CHICAGO (AP) — The big Opt-Out looked like a big bust Wednesday as Thanksgiving travelers around the country patiently submitted to full-body scans and pat-down searches rather than create havoc on one of the busiest flying days of the year. In fact, in some parts of the country, bad weather was shaping up as a bigger threat to travelers' hopes of getting to their destinations on time.

For days, activists had waged a loosely organized campaign on the Internet to encourage airline passengers to refuse full-body scans and insist on a pat-down in what was dubbed National Opt-Out Day. But as of Wednesday afternoon, the cascading delays and monumental lines that many feared would result had not materialized.

"It was a day at the beach, a box of chocolates," said Greg Hancock, 61, who breezed through security at the Phoenix airport on the way to a vacation in California. He was sent through a body scanner after a golf ball marker set off the metal detector.

His wife, Marti Hancock, 58, said that ever since she was in the air on Sept. 11, 2001, and feared there was a bomb on her plane, she has been fully supportive of stringent security: "If that's what you have to do to keep us safe, that's what you have to do."

The Transportation Security Administration said few people seemed to be opting out. Some protesters did show up, including one man seen walking around the Salt Lake City airport in a skimpy, Speedo-style bathing suit, and others carrying signs denouncing the TSA's screening methods as unnecessarily intrusive and embarrassing.

By most accounts, though, the lines moved smoothly, and there was no more or less congestion at major U.S. airports than there was in previous years on the day before Thanksgiving.

"I would go so far as to say that National Opt-Out Day was a big bust," said Genevieve Shaw Brown, a spokeswoman for the travel company Travelocity, which had staff at 12 of the nation's largest airports watching for problems.

Protest organizers — some of whom had no plans themselves to fly on Wednesday — were not prepared to declare the event a flop, saying the publicity alone cranked up pressure on the White House and the TSA to review their security measures.

"The TSA now talks about re-evaluating everything," said James Babb, an organizer for one of the protest groups, We Won't Fly. "That is a tremendous victory for a grass-roots movement."

For days, the X-ray scans that can see through people's clothing and the new pat-downs that include the crotch and chest have created a backlash among politicians, bloggers and others. The security screenings have been lampooned on "Saturday Night Live" and mocked on T-shirts, bumper stickers and underwear emblazoned "Don't Touch My Junk," from a line uttered by a defiant traveler in San Diego.

At the Phoenix airport Wednesday, husband-and-wife protesters Patricia Stone and John Richards held signs decrying "porno-scans" and drew sidelong glances from some passengers but words of support from others, who told them, "Thank you for being here."

"Just because you buy a plane ticket doesn't mean you have to subject yourself to awful security measures. It's not a waiver of your rights," said Stone, 44. "The TSA is security theater. They're not protecting us."

At Denver International Airport, Chris Maj, a 31-year-old computer programmer, carried a sign that read, "END THE TSA ASK ME HOW." He and three others handed pocket-size copies of the U.S. Constitution.

"They're touching breasts, they're touching buttocks, all of these places that if you or I were to touch, we'd go to jail," he said.

But many passengers brushed off such concerns.

In Atlanta, 22-year-old Ashley Humphries was given a pat-down search of her chest and crotch by a female screener after bobby pins in her hair set off a metal detector.

"I can see how it would make someone uncomfortable, but I'm not easily offended, so it really didn't bother me as much," said Humphries, who was traveling with her fiance to spend Thanksgiving with family in Tennessee.

The TSA has said the need for such measures was demonstrated last Christmas, when a Nigerian man allegedly tried to blow up a Detroit-bound plane with explosives hidden in his underwear.

For days, TSA chief John Pistole had pleaded with Thanksgiving travelers not to boycott the body scans and prevent other people from getting home for the holidays. The fear was that if even a relatively small number of people opted for a pat-down, delays could quickly mount. Full-body scans for passengers chosen at random take as little as 10 seconds, the pat-downs four minutes or longer.

Fearing such delays, some passengers decided to go to the airport especially early and were pleasantly surprised.

Retirees Bill and Margaret Selfridge arrived three hours ahead of schedule at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport for their flight to Washington. It took only 10 minutes to get through the checkpoint at 8 a.m.

"Now we get to drink a lot of coffee," Bill Selfridge said.

The weather, though, threatened to spoil some people's travel plans, especially in the West.

A ferocious, early-season snowstorm pummeled the Rockies, bringing whiteout conditions to parts of the region and closing roads. It was expected to delay air travelers and people who probably thought they were doing the smart thing by driving.

Freezing rain glazed roads in the Midwest, where at least three traffic deaths in Iowa were blamed on the weather. And windy weather in New England could create snags.

More than 40 million people plan to travel over the Thanksgiving holiday, according to AAA, with more than 1.6 million flying — a 3.5 percent increase from last year.

At least some people said they decided not to fly at all, in part because of the airport screening procedures. At an Amtrak station in Chicago, Pam Edwards said she decided to travel by Amtrak from Jackson, Miss., even though it would take 15 hours instead of two.

"With all the things with the TSA, I just decided it might be a little bit easier, stress-wise, to take the train," the 61-year-old retired preschool teacher said as she stepped off the train.

Edwards, who said she suffers from sleep apnea, travels with a machine to ease her breathing. She recalled her last flight and the hassle of being stopped by airport security because of the device.

"I was thinking, I don't know if I want to go through that again," she said.

AP writers Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis; Blake Nicholson in Bismarck, N.D.; Ted Shaffrey in New York; Eileen Sullivan in Washington; Ray Henry, Cara Rubinsky and Kate Brumback in Atlanta; Barbara Rodriguez in Chicago; Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Ala.; Tony Winton in Miami; Ron Todt in Philadelphia; Amanda Lee Myers in Phoenix; and Kristen Wyatt in Denver contributed to this report.

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