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The Worldly Traveler
Peter Greenberg September 18, 2006PAGES: 1 2
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Nothing is more counterintuitive than the airline business. In my experience, I don't know of any other business that manages to stay in business by consistently abusing its best customers. So I suppose it's not surprising that airline/airport security has followed suit.
Just about every time I fly, I am taken out of the security line for additional screening. Everything I own is inspected, and I am frisked, wanded and scanned. I have also been told by the TSA that I am not on the "no-fly" list.... Instead, based on their behavior, I am tempted to create a "why fly?" list.
Consider this: I fly 400,000 miles a year. I haven't checked a bag domestically since three years before 9/11. (I FedEx my bags,) Like many frequent flyers, I make my reservations less than 24 hours before I travel, and in many cases, I fly on one-way tickets, because my itinerary changes so often. Under current profiling protocols, my first name might as well be Ahmed.
It's unfortunate enough that anyone named Ahmed will be stopped. Yet I apparently fit the profile, too. But let's look at that profile: no bags, one-way ticket, reservations made within 24 hours of scheduled flight.... This doesn't describe a terrorist, but a high-yield, frequent-flyer business traveler.
Recently, I was discussing this issue on the air from a remote broadcast in Minneapolis. "There's no intelligence and intuition being applied to airport security," I said. "When I finish this segment, I will go to the airport to fly to New York to be on the Today Show tomorrow. I will have no bags, I have a one-way ticket to La Guardia and my office just made my reservation about two hours ago. And I will be immediately taken out of line as fitting the profile."
And of course, that's exactly what happened. I raced to the airport, got my boarding pass. I showed my driver's license and boarding pass to the rent-a-cop at the beginning of the security line and was told, "You have been selected for secondary screening." This time, when I started to laugh, I noticed some of the other TSA screeners were laughing, too. What did they find so funny? They had just watched my segment on TV! "I'm sorry," one of them shrugged. "We think it's silly, too, but we have to do this," he said as he led me to the side. "We don't have a choice."
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