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Whoever mentioned Ontario, CA.. I have had a similar thing happen there, they literally took every single thing out of my backpack and swabbed it. Remember the recent movie with the Sloths working at the DMV? That was what it was like.. The whole time the guy was a total jerk about it.
Florence SC is really bad for their TSA agents.. They have nothing better to do there other than to bother you..
Actually I had a harrowing experience with El Al Airlines. It wasnt the TSA like security people but the airline agents. They interrogate anyone who boards El Al requiring you to answer questions about your connection to Judaism. Being that my dad is the jewish one, not my mom, according to Jewish law I am not jewish. Needless to say El Al did not like that very much even with the fact that I have a very Jewish sounding last name. So there I go the stern agent escorts me to a back room where I am further screened like I'm some kind of threat or something... needless to say if you arent Jewish they dont want you flying with them.
I had an amazing experience there otherwise though!
I am almost always patted down (Post body scan, not in a room) when I travel. If the TSA was actually, ya know, EFFECTIVE at security, it'd be fine, but the TSA is merely security theater to make paranoid Americans feel safe after 9/11. Whenever I am overseas, I have no problems with security; it is at a much more reasonable level than ours (IE no body scanners, few pat downs, etc). The agents over there are much more friendly than ours; For example, coming back from Germany recently, I had left a bottle of water in my bag from earlier in the trip, which the bag scanner had picked up on, and the guy simply said "Do you have a bottle in there?" and let me go through my own bag, without making me take everything out, etc to find it. In the States, my bag would've been confiscated, searched, had half of it stolen, and gotten a full body cavity search. They actually treat passengers as innocent till guilty, as opposed to our system.
Actually I had a harrowing experience with El Al Airlines. It wasnt the TSA like security people but the airline agents. They interrogate anyone who boards El Al requiring you to answer questions about your connection to Judaism. Being that my dad is the jewish one, not my mom, according to Jewish law I am not jewish. Needless to say El Al did not like that very much even with the fact that I have a very Jewish sounding last name. So there I go the stern agent escorts me to a back room where I am further screened like I'm some kind of threat or something... needless to say if you arent Jewish they dont want you flying with them.
I had an amazing experience there otherwise though!
That's a different situation. Even security there is a whole other ballgame. Your average Israeli security agent is a veteran of the IDF and not the kid who barely graduated HS. It means a whole level of confidence, training, etc...They also process far fewer travellers than the TSA, and can afford to take more time.
The TSA has never been a problem for either of us but we recently had an excellent experience with them.
We flew in to see family in IN. We had sold our parent's home and my sister had some things from it for me. My Mom had painted sailing ship scenes on two small circular saw blades. She always wanted DH to have them and had his name written on the back. They were wrapped in newspapers and he placed them in his backpack that he uses as a under the seat carry on and forgot about them. We were in the TSA pre line and all was fine until the backpack went under the scanner. Oops.
DH was pulled over to have his backpack opened with the TSA agent. After seeing the problem and DH explaining, He was escorted to the Delta counter by the TSA agent where they retrieved one of our checked bags and DH put the saws blades in one and they marked it Fragile.
If this had been LaGuardia or Atlanta, one of our frequently used airports, the TSA would not have had time to deal with the problem and we would have lost them. This was in the Fort Wayne, IN airport though, which is smaller and they took the time and their kindness was much appreciated. The larger airports do not have the luxury of handling things the same way smaller ones can because of their overwhelming passenger volume. If we had to throw away the saw blades, it would have been totally our fault, there was no excuse for not being more careful.
I fly a lot for work, and because it's the only feasible way to get around for an Alaska resident. The security theater is tiresome but I jump through their hoops as cooperatively as I can.
Fairbanks' airport TSA are really pleasant. I've never waited for more than ten minutes in line there, even when it was busy, and they're nice with the derpy tourists trying to carry on knife souvenirs and whatnot. Very courteous as well. Yeah, it's a small airport, but someone's obviously put some effort into building an agreeable workplace.
The two most unpleasant and/or inefficient locations I've experiences were Dulles and Minneapolis-St. Paul. Dulles agents have been unnervingly edgy and rude; MSP is just chaos every time I come through.
needless to say if you arent Jewish they dont want you flying with them.
That's simply not true. No airline or national security service has more advance information about passengers than El Al. They do check non-Jewish passengers very thoroughly, but passengers with a mixed-Jewish background all get more intense screening.
That's simply not true. No airline or national security service has more advance information about passengers than El Al. They do check non-Jewish passengers very thoroughly, but passengers with a mixed-Jewish background all get more intense screening.
Which basically means they want to deter those travelers from flying with them aka they don't trust them
Cuz all jews are good & everyone else is bad... mmmhmm yup
I wouldnt fly with them again because of that.
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