<p>Travelers from all over the world come to the USA and endure the TSA within the USA. Has anyone seen one of these TSA excessiveness claims being made by international travelers?</p>
<p>I get the idea that when it is you personally that is inconvenienced by the TSA it is irksome. As someone has mentioned, the USA is dealing with 100s of US airport and millions of passengers every week. When I travel I see so many people who are clueless as to the most basic TSA requirements. Often people in line will try to point out what “the drill” is. It usually is apprecated and takes the focus off the inconvenience and allows the feeling of helping someone through a shared experience. Try it out.</p>
<p>I have had many patdowns, as I refuse to go through full body scanners. They have always offered me the option of a private screening, which I have refused. I have never had much trouble with the patdowns. It is sad that there ARE some thoughtless TSA agents which have caused such mortification to some passengers. I count my blessings that even though I fly about 15-20 flights/year I had not had these problems.</p>
<p>I do fly with a medical device that is fairly large and is generally carefully examined and swiped to see if there is any trace of explosives. As long as I give myself enough time to get through TSA, I have never had problems.</p>
<p>07DAD, international travellers now choose to go elsewhere, when possible. There are complaints, but it’s easier for foreign travellers just to go to other countries where the security searches aren’t as uselessly over-the-top as they are in the US. </p>
<p>This isn’t a question of me personally being “inconvenienced”. I fly enough that I know the drill, and I’m not annoyed if other passengers are slower getting everything into the proper bins. Like HIMom, I opt for a patdown if the only other option is the full-body scanner, and have personally never had an issue with the process. </p>
<p>The problem with is with the kinds of incidents described above, and with the TSA’s unsympathetic and unhelpful reactions to them.</p>
<p>“07DAD, international travellers now choose to go elsewhere, when possible. There are complaints, but it’s easier for foreign travellers just to go to other countries where the security searches aren’t as uselessly over-the-top as they are in the US.”</p>
<p>US tourism industry suffered a huge blow due to these “security measures”.</p>
<p>SlitheyTove: I emphatically agree with your posts in this thread. I don’t care about being “inconvenienced” either, but would rather the screening serve some useful purpose. I am also concerned about the elderly and those with young children. Last week I watched a young mom traveling alone with 3 small children get separated from them when she was stopped in the security line. None of the officials was grabbing a child already through screening and no one official was coming to her aid. They were just ordering her to be still. Needless to say, she was getting quite excited. Other passengers had to try corral the kids and hold them where she could see them while TSA finished screening her. Very Bad Situation. I tried to replay in my head how she could have handled it differently. When I used to travel alone with toddlers 20+ years ago, all airport and airline personnel were unbelievably helpful. </p>
<p>On a different recent trip I heard an airline representative tell another mom, with infant in arms and toddler attached to knee, that he couldn’t do a thing to help her as they watched the door close to her plane. He said she had to go all the way back to the ticket counter outside security to get a new flight scheduled. It was hard for me to believe that was even true.</p>
<p>Ah, TSA. I have an implanted defibrillator and five stents in my heart. Dulles made me go through the body scanner, despite my device cards from the implant and stent manufacturer. They then yelled at me when I couldn’t raise my left arm high enough to suit them. My shoulder has not fully recovered from the implant surgery and I have limited range of motion. Heaven only knows what they will do when I get to start carrying my implant monitor with me.</p>
<p>Coming back from SF on that trip, the employee told me I could always refuse the scanner, period, and opt for the pat-down. Only problem was that there was no place remotely private to do this. That TSA agent got to third base with me in front of dozens of strangers.</p>
<p>The local courthouse was great – they let me bypass the xray machine and scanned from the waist down with a hand device.</p>
<p>Don’t even try to gate check the bag I bring on to the plane! It has all my meds and electronic equipment. No way that leaves my person.</p>
<p>Do you fly frequently? Because this is a very frequent scenario - your bag is taken at the door of the plane when the overhead bins are full, and they put it right down into the plane; you either have to wait for it at the back-end or pick it up at baggage claim. Either way, it’s not really an unusual occurrence at all, and that’s why anyone who flies with any frequency tries to use carry-on, and definitely won’t stick anything they might need during a flight (such as computer, medicine) in a carry-on suitcase but will stick it in a briefcase or handbag that won’t be taken away.</p>
<p>As a super-frequent flyer, I’m pretty inured to this stuff. Scan me, poke me, whatever. I find that it’s the infrequent flyers who get more worked up by this stuff.</p>
<p>I think it was not having the gate checked bag tagged that was the issue there. I’ve never had them lose a gate checked bag but anything is possible.</p>
<p>The gate-check issue is different than the TSA screening issue. That said, the problem with gate-check isn’t with gate-check per se. It’s with gate-checking and not being issued a claim check or tag. Like another poster upthread, I’ve also travelled with someone using a wheelchair where the airline lost the chair after gate-checking it without any tagging while assuring us that all would be fine. :mad: I was much younger, and was also stressed by the nature of the trip (a final vacation for the wheelchair-bound individual, who died shortly after). Nowadays, I’d know to stand my ground. </p>
<p>TSA foiling terrorist attacks: hard to know. On the one hand, there could well be security reasons not to tell all. On the other hand, you’d expect the TSA to tout their successes. The TSA blog is now reduced to endless laundry lists of the surprising things that people try to bring on airplanes–primarily accidentally, one hopes!</p>
<p>“Last week I watched a young mom traveling alone with 3 small children get separated from them when she was stopped in the security line. None of the officials was grabbing a child already through screening and no one official was coming to her aid. They were just ordering her to be still. Needless to say, she was getting quite excited. Other passengers had to try corral the kids and hold them where she could see them”</p>
<p>Oh , the new things parents have to learn. We always send our kiddos ahead of us so we can keep track…so now we need to go first to be cleared and waiting for them. I don’t blame TSA for this, although some training might be in order to advise parents to lead instead of follow. TSA aren’t in charge of anyone once they clear security, and while it would be nice if they watched the kiddos until Mom passed through, they would be not paying attention to thier duty .</p>
<p>O M G Alh, I never flew with my kids even before 911, partially because I have a child that I could easily see pitching a fit so big we couldn’t get cleared for takeoff.
( ironically this now young adult has racked up more miles than many adults twice her age)</p>
<p>But- being separated from your children in a crowded place. What a nightmare!</p>
<p>I’ve had the pat downs. I can’t get too worked up over them. I really can’t worry that the screeners are getting their jollies feeling me through my clothing. And if they are - well, that means I’ve still got it, lol.</p>
<p>Yes, I fly frequently, though not in the favored status I used to get. I have, in the last few years, had to leave my bag at the door of the plane a number of times, and I always got a “receipt” or tag. That they ran out of tags is not a big deal thing, but that they didn’t just do a quick makeshift receipt as I suggested or run and get more was. I think they fully knew that the luggage was not going on that plane–though they did put mine on there when I let them know that what they were telling me was recorded. </p>
<p>What was truly conscionable was the treatment of those passengers at the other end of the line who got their faces rubbed in it that “no tickee, no laundry” is the way it works. You lose a bag and you have no tag or receipt and the airline is not on the hook. YOu have to come and describe the bag if they find it; they are not obliged to deliver it to you as they are when the bag doesn’t make it to the destination with you. My son’s friend works for the airlines, and there are a lot of things like that done to make it easier on them. They have been on the brink financially for a long time, and cutting services is what they do. </p>
<p>THey don’t much effort to seat families together anymore and often refuse to redo seating arrangements; we are talking about just asking. There have been any number of rude things that take place that I think are inexcusable. We need another Ralph Nadar to hit ‘em where it hurts–off their bottom line. THat’ s what gets their attention.</p>
<p>Perhaps taking a picture of your bag or wheelchair at the gate along with the person that took it would suffice as proof that they lost your bag and didn’t tag it.</p>
<p>I always take pictures of rental cars before and after so that I can prove the condition that I received it in and the condition that it was in when I returned it. In the vast majority of cases, the rental agents don’t bother looking over the car. But I have heard stories where they added damage charges - most people aren’t in a position to verify whether or not that happened. It could be a rental agent that did the damage after the car was returned.</p>
<p>We used Southwest Airlines earlybird option. $10 for early seating. I think that this is well worth the cost - you get in faster, get off the plane faster, and you have space for your carry-on. Today, seating is something that you pay for. Same with premium drinks and maybe meals. I haven’t run into any rudeness issues or altercations on my recent flights. I asked my daughter about her flights this past summer and she said that things went very smoothly.</p>
<p>It doesn’t mean a thing. If the bag is lost, you have a picture of a person with a bag, what does that prove? I could take any picture of airline personelle and claim that was my bag they had. When you have an official tag/ reciept you are covered under the airline’s own policies. If the bag is not there when you get to your destination after the bags are unloaded, they will deliver it to you within a certain time period and if you don’t get it by then, you get some allowances for reimbursement for loss of use of things you packed. Those rules in place were hard won, and you can get pretty far with them internally with the airlines. Otherwise we are talking about going to court over abuses and the time and money benefits are rarely worth it for any individual unless egregrous amounts and practices are at stake and you get publicity over the suit. That is why they were not giving out the tags, by the way. THe chances of any repercussions over that are just about zip. Giving out the tags and not having the stuff there, means automatic repercussions to the airlines under their own operating rules and regs. </p>
<p>Enterprise is a true culprit of this sort, and I took them to court over this practice. They took it all the way to the court date, and didn’t show up so the case was dismissed in my favor However, they hurt my credit which took time and trouble to address and really winning the case was more a personal vindication and not worth the time and money expended. The franchise could not care less. In the two years it took to be settled, it went through at least three managers. No one took ownership of the issue and what I was fighting was the corporate structure of how things were done there. If you can figure that out and work with it instead of against it, you can get resolution and satisfaction a lot quicker. That litle piece of paper, the receipt,puts the airline in a cycle that they are, by their own operating rules, forced to undergo. Trying to fight them outside of that cycle is very difficult, though these days with Facebook, Twitter, and other internet tools, it is possible to go viral about their abuses as this woman has done, and perhaps get some reslution that way. I wanted my bag, so I wanted to make sure that I had the highest chance of getting it. A picture of it would not have gone anywhere. Truly, they can just pitch your bag if you cause too much trouble, and have no consequence without that little receipt. My friend’s son has told me a number of stories how the employees entertain themselve getting “even” with nasty customers. Your bag can go many places very easily. But with a receipt, they are forced to do some work and pay some consequences and it goes up on the talley as an offence. No tickee, no laundry.</p>
<p>Well, we could bump it up to taking a video of the person with your bag stating their name and the date and time of the flight.</p>
<p>I can be a noisy consumer and I don’t care about a company’s process and procedures. I just tell the service person that processes and procedures can be ignored with the right level of management authority. I have contacted CEO offices of companies to complain in the past and I’ve received a lot more attention with that route (assuming that I could find the CEO’s office) that dealing at lower levels.</p>
<p>BTW, which airlines have you had problems with?</p>