As a frequent traveller I can appreciate the frustrations expressed.
Foir those who say "shut up it all for security" really do not not understand reality.
First of all the shoe guy was a total travesty that only needed half a system to be stopped but didnt.
The biggest mistake is trying to relate this guy to real terrorists.
They are not stupid - look at the technicalities of the Locherbie device to see how technically competent these people are.
You have to realise that after Sept the US govenment HAD to do something so they formed the TSA with $4billion to spend.
How do you show Joe Public his tax dollars at work ??
How have a row of hi tech machines and a whole crowd of people in uniforms and long lines of people seeing people get stripped and searched - boy this is impressive !
The TSA did not automatically take any of the original security people ( and they were not all morons!) but they recruited all new people. How ? an advert on the Internet and an instant exam ? I have 2 friends who did the exam and passed. The critical thing about the questions and exam is that the rating starts with military service, anyone with 20 years in the Military ( even as a cook !) is a cert.
How is it that the US is the only place you have to take a laptop not only out of your brief case but out of is own case. Is it US technology or back to the visibility.
The biggest weapon against this is profiling but that can't be used. If someone was serious about preventing hijacking this should be one of the procedure but no we can't do that yet we can take passenger number 5 because the computer picks it even if it is a 80 year old grannie in a zimmer frame.
The shoe scene of course is commonplace but I went out of the States last week and set the bells off so had to sit and the guy rand the wand all over me and of course the shoes set it off. So remove the shoes and sit while it goes through the machine. All finished got dressed and on to the gate. There I got the lucky number and had the gate search and again the shoes triggered the wand so off with the shoes. I thought this will take a while as the Xray machine was back in the terminal. But no he turned the shoes over and looked at them then gave them back ! Of course he could have had xray vision so perhaps I misjudged the system
Travelling a couple of days after Set 11 they brought the meal tray with a note on it saying that the knife had been replaced with a plastic one for security reasons. I opened the wrapper and sure enough the knife had been replaced with plastic one - but the metal fork was still there to which the little old lady sitting next to me held it up and said "you could sure do lot of damage with this "!! This is still the situation today
Finally, a newspaper joke just after the guy started all the shoe searches, showed a line of people lining up at an airport metal detector all naked and someone saying " Well who told them about exploding underwear "!!
