Sometimes, no matter how hard I try to look for the positive elements in aviation security, there are somewhere between few-to-none to be found. The mere mention of TSA screening raises the hackles of pretty much the entire traveling public, not to mention the widely touted TSA Pre-ü program – a pretty good idea in the abstract – if you don’t mind paying an $85 membership fee to be insulted, or waiting in even longer lines because TSA is trying to justify its jacked-up throughput numbers by pushing random people into the fast lines.
TSA agents in LAX recently refused passage to a disabled woman confined to a wheelchair and unable to speak her own name clearly due to a stroke. She and her sister had to take an 8-hour bus trip to Phoenix. Here’s a surprise: the TSA spokesman blamed the passenger, stating “it could have been handled differently by the family … they won’t have this problem again because they know about the programs that we have in place.” Is the position of Mr. Sensitivity a step up or a step down in the TSA Public Relations hierarchy?
TSA’s unique notion of thoughtfulness is also being extended to the Jewish faith as this is being written during Passover. The agency said it was making special preparations to prepare its agents to be sensitive to travelers who may be observing the religious holiday by carrying unique prayer items or engaging in religious practices while traveling,” the TSA said in a statement on its website. While I suppose we can all applaud such sensitivity for “special” situations, one wonders about the preparedness and effectiveness of their awareness training for the practices of all religions all the time. Passover has been around for about 20 centuries, give or take. It’s not a pop-up event.
And finally (for now), a personal acquaintance of mine, a disabled attorney who relies on a cane to walk, relates this stunning tale of competence: last week, in the normal chain of Pre-ü events, TSA managed to lose his 3-foot-long cane as it traveled through the 8-foot length of the x-ray tunnel. We are both astounded that this is physically or even magically possible, but more so that the TSO ducked responsibility by alleging it had not been placed in there to be screened. The good news is that while TSA dodged the blame, Delta Airlines came up with a spiffier replacement from their lost and found office. Who leaves their cane behind? How long did it hide in that x-ray tunnel without being noticed? Was it, as I read about recently, stuck beneath that abandoned prosthetic leg? A full package: a leg and a cane to go with it. Yeah, there’s a mental image that won’t go away…
