"Bad Enough Being Shoeless but Just Look at This Décor"

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

On The Road
Bad Enough Being Shoeless but Just Look at This Décor 
By JOE SHARKEY
The New York (NY) Times


AT the airport security checkpoints, I always look at the hodgepodge of
folding tables and figure that somewhere, a church basement is missing its
furniture.

That was going through my mind the other day while leaving the Tucson
airport. I’d been away from home for more than a week working, so my
carry-on and laptop were stuffed with files.

Passengers and screeners alike all looked as if they were silently humming
“Sixteen Tons.” Hoist those bags! Keep those bins moving! 

In front of me was a uniformed pilot guiding himself and two small girls,
both with their pink rollaboards, through the checkpoint. I’m always amazed
at how parents can maneuver bag-laden children in those circumstances
without losing at least a backpack, let alone a child.

One screener was evidently in charge of ensuring that passengers knew they
had to remove those portable CPAP devices (for continuous positive airway
pressure) that have become popular travel accessories for the growing number
of people diagnosed with sleep apnea, a common ailment in which airways
tighten, interrupting sleep. 

“Take all CPAPs out of your carry-on bags,” the screener kept saying.

Behind me a woman put her backpack on the roller belt. Wearing latex gloves,
the screener pressed on a small bulge in the backpack.

“Is that a CPAP, ma’am? It looks like a CPAP,” the screener said.

“It also looks like a chicken sandwich, which is what it is,” the woman
replied wearily.

In front of me, the pilot’s children were now safely on the other side of
the magnetometer. He heaved his own stuff onto the belt and removed his
shoes.

“I thought you guys didn’t have to take your shoes off if you were in
uniform,” I said. 

He gave me a look and said, “Do not get me started.”

On the other side of the magnetometer, there was the usual pile-up that
always reminds me of that classic “I Love Lucy” episode where the assembly
line at the candy factory flips into warp speed. Bags, bins and laptops
piled up while kids and adults hopped on one foot to put on their shoes as
screeners scrambled to haul empty bins away.

We spend about $5 billion a year in federal money on airport security. Yes,
screeners do good work under tough conditions, and, yes, the Transportation
Security Administration is working on better technology for better security.


But why do the checkpoints still look like garage sales?

“Don’t get me started,” said Ira Weinstein, the president of AIR Inc., a
market research and consulting company that works with airports. Evidently
it’s the new catch phrase.

“There are no standards of furniture or fixtures from airport to airport. It
seems to all be under the auspices of the T.S.A. and/or the airport and/or
nobody knows,” Mr. Weinstein said, adding: “The furniture is usually folding
bridge chairs — $59 to $69 a table at Kmart. At some airports, they bought
stainless-steel autopsy tables, but they don’t match up either, and you
still have people getting fingers bruised or cut as bags pile up or fall
off.” 

There have been scattered improvements, he said. The Atlanta airport bought
tables actually designed to match the X-ray machines. A few airports have
sold advertising space on newly designed bins, and some have bought systems
to move bins back to the front of the queue so that “screeners who ought to
be doing security aren’t working as bin collectors,” he said.

Given bare or stockinged feet, the lack of floor mats is also a chronic
problem, Mr. Weinstein said. Matt Blaze, an associate professor of computer
science at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert in security
cryptology, agreed.

“Somehow we ended up with this cobbled-together mess,” he said. “At the very
point in the process at which you have to take your shoes off, that’s where
the carpeting ends.”

>From a customer service standpoint, it’s “infuriating,” he said. But
disorder also raises genuine security concerns. 

“There’s no better place to get away with something than a chaotic
environment,” he said.

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