I was going to save this for my trip summary to Dayton, but given the interest (hits in the hundreds according to Google Analytics) in my quick post about it, I thought I’d elaborate separately. Yesterday morning at the Dayton airport, I was sent to secondary screening after passing through the AIT machine, aka nude-o-scope. My sin, you ask? I am a Type 1 Diabetic and wear an insulin pump. I was asked to handle my pump with both hands, and then my palms were swabbed. Perfectly reasonable. Then I was given the full monty. Now, I’m not quite sure how wearing an insulin pump increases the odds that I’m hiding contraband next to my private parts, but you can rest assured, the TSO verified that I wasn’t.
Maybe I’m just jaded, or maybe the TSO’s attitude and demeanor were such that he put me at ease and kept me fully informed of what was about to happen next all through the process. In fact, he was about as professional as anyone could be in such a situation. Don’t know why…but when it was said and done, I didn’t feel like I needed to seek counseling, hide under a chair, or take a shower. In fact, it was just about exactly the same patdown I received when flying from Cali to Bogota on Avianca back in the 90’s. Primary difference being, the Colombians made me stand up on a box to do it, and the female security person doing the errr…inspection, was a helluva lot better looking than this guy was. Of course, this is the United States of America, and not 1990’s Colombia, but I digress. That said, it is what it is. Did I like it? No. Do I want to do it again? No. Will I? Since I intend to keep flying as long as I’m breathing, I guess so until we decide to do something different with security.
[…] one thing you already know….I got to partake in my first full Monty enhanced patdown in Dayton (DAY) this past week. Not fab, but certainly not something that makes me want to stop […]
[…] pat down, read this recent blog post by fellow BoardingArea blogger Marshall Jackson – A Little More About That Enhanced Patdown … and for those of you who just want a good laugh, click the video […]
I think its going to get a lot worse. In fact TSA has only moved into one direction. Virtually each incident is worse than the last. At the current rate of decline, within a decade people will be enduring cavity searches. TSA will eventually be armed and the TSA abuse stories of today will eventually be stories of passengers being shot or tazzed. Think that is to extreme? Well 10 years ago, who could have imagined that people would be routinely irradiated, have their genitals groped, and be the subject of police brutality for refusing such? TSA and DHS is… Read more »