Tighter checks stump travelers
By STEVE HUETTEL, ALEXANDRA ZAYAS and ABBIE VANSICKLE
Published August 11, 2006
TAMPA - Rana Mubarac tallied her losses while waiting Thursday to claim checked baggage at Tampa International Airport.
She had thrown out her Lancome face cream, Clean & Clear acne wash, Vitagloss lip balm and contact solution before boarding a flight from Cleveland to Tampa.
Mubarac, 15, hadn't heard about the thwarted terrorist plot to blow up U.S.-bound planes using disguised liquid explosives until she got to the airport security line.
"Wait, what happened?" she recalled thinking when told to dump the items from her carry-on bag. "I thought we were still allowed to bring all this."
New rules banning passengers from taking liquids and gels on airliners caused widespread confusion and long lines Thursday at Tampa International and airports across the country.
Early morning travelers at Tampa International waited as long as 95 minutes - more than an hour longer than usual - to pass through security checkpoints. Lines sped up considerably as the day wore on, with waits of 10 to 30 minutes as more passengers heard news of the new rules .
Officials are advising passengers to arrive two hours before departure for domestic flights and three hours early for international trips.
Travelers are checking luggage they would otherwise bring on board, causing longer lines at ticket counters, said Louis Miller, the airport's executive director
Security lines also are moving slower than usual. Federal screeners are searching far more carry-on bags by hand to dig out various banned items, such as toothpaste, deodorant, perfume, eye drops and nasal spray.
Miller didn't know when the new federal restrictions, the tightest since right after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, might be lifted.
"It could be three days," he said. "It could be three months."
Travelers waiting at gates for their flights were surprised by federal screeners asking to look through purses and bags that had already gone though X-ray machines.
"They took my eye drops," said Donna Moceri of Marysville, Ohio, as she waited to board a Southwest Airlines flight. "I didn't realize they were in there."
Chapstick, sunscreen, lotions and other banned substances were pulled from stores in secure areas of airport terminals, said Tim Juul of HMS Host, which manages airport vendors.
Shops added staff to sell food and drinks to travelers forced to ditch water bottles and snacks. Posted notices warned customers to finish beverages before getting on flights.
Passengers and even Transportation Security Administration officials struggled at times to understand how the new rules applied.
A screener emptied a soft-sided lunch cooler that held a bag of grapes, insulin syringes and a plastic frozen ice pack. She held up the ice pack full of liquid and gave her supervisor a shrug.
He let it through. But the cooler's owner, Gloria Watts, did lose a bottle of nail polish and a "bingo dauber," a marker for paper bingo cards.
"This is a big hassle today," said Watts, a Brooksville resident flying to Milwaukee with her husband, Gordon. "I've never gone through this long a line."
There was also confusion over baby formula. Jeanette Connelly of Safety Harbor pondered bringing the powder and adding water provided by flight attendants on the plane.
But with reports that the terrorists had planned to combine liquids into an explosive cocktail, "I was nervous they might not want people to mix things" on board, she said.
Connelly brought the formula in bottles for 6-month-old Malia. Contrary to some news reports that passengers had to sip formula to prove it was real, Connelly was waved through.
The carry-on rules will have a big impact on business travelers who make short trips. Most dread checking luggage and prefer stuffing everything in a bag that fits in an overhead bin.
That was the game plan for Gina Valenti of Davie, a computer networking tech for a law firm.
She spent the night in Tampa, finished her work Thursday morning and headed to the airport to catch a flight to Fort Lauderdale.
Valenti heard about the ban on liquids but was shocked when she was forced to surrender shampoo, hand lotion, toothpaste and a $29 bottle of computer screen cleaner.
Passengers got plenty of warning about the new restrictions at Tampa International ticket counters, at entrances to shuttles and as they lined up for security checkpoints.
Plastic garbage cans were everywhere, filled with stick deodorant, bottles of hair spray and makeup and piles of empty water bottles.
There were some showdowns at the checkpoints. Arlene Hausner of Tampa pleaded unsuccessfully with a TSA supervisor to keep her thumb-sized $35 tube of Lancome moisturizer.
Mubarac, the teen who lost her makeup in Cleveland, was more circumspect.
Two weeks before, she was among thousands evacuated from Lebanon. She was taken to Cyprus, then Ireland, a confusing and scary journey.
"This," she said, "was really minor compared to that."
Steve Huettel can be reached at huettel@sptimes.com or 813 226-3384. Alexandra Zayas can be reached at azayas@sptimes.com or 813-226-3354. Abbie Vansickle can be reached at vansickle@sptimes.com or 813-226-3373.