Arduous airport searches welcomed by TIA travelers

Security screeners confiscate a mountain of everyday items, an exercise passengers say is worth it.

By JEAN HELLER

© St. Petersburg Times,
published September 20, 2001

[Times photo: Dirk Shadd]

This box includes scissors, corkscrews, handcuffs and other sharp or questionable objects. The box was filled in just three days at TIA's Airside F.

Orlando supervised a shift of security screeners Wednesday at Airside A at Tampa International Airport as they searched every piece of carry-on luggage headed for an airplane.

It was Orlando who made the tough decisions: Should a woman in a wheelchair be allowed to take her nail file aboard? Could a Continental Express captain keep his nail clipper? Should a tattooist be allowed to keep 100 of his needles?

And what about the man in western wear with the pendant replicating a bull's head, complete with sharp horns. Could he keep it?

The answer in all cases was no.

Security screeners, the last line of defense between airborne terrorism and the flying public, have been criticized as minimum-wage workers who don't do their jobs well. But the crew working in Airside A, where the principal tenant is Southwest Airlines, seemed energized and determined.

The result was a mountain of confiscated implements and tools that passengers elected to abandon rather than returning to the main terminal to leave them in their cars or check them.

"We're confiscating everything with a sharp point," said Orlando. "Do you have any idea how many everyday things have sharp points?"

Some screeners even took cigarette lighters.

Most passengers accepted the situation in good humor. In fact, some turned themselves in.

"They took a nail clipper from me," said George Neilson of St. Louis. "I had it in my toiletry bag, and I only thought of it riding (the shuttle) out here. I told them it was there, and they took it. No problem."

Mike Springs of Tampa came through security with an enormous commercial battery, but he was allowed to keep it because he had checked the tools that attached to it. But the screeners took away the scissors Springs used to clip his mustache.

"It's no big deal," Springs said.

The tattooist, Chip Nathan of Boston, a manicurist carrying a complete set of the tools of her trade, and the man with the bull's head pendant all elected to return to the main terminal and check their belongings rather than lose them.

"It's not overkill at all," Nathan said. "Not after all that's happened."

The screeners checked pens to be sure they worked.

All passengers were hand-scanned with metal detectors, even if they didn't set off alarms in the security arches.

Jackets with metal buttons went through X-ray.

Steel-toed boots were hand-scanned.

So was a woman with surgical pins in her leg.

Even a long-haired dachshund traveling with its owner got the once-over.

A woman carrying the cremated remains of a family member was asked to produce a death certificate and a certificate of cremation.

"The other day we had somebody come through with ashes in a plastic bag without any certification," Orlando said. "We had to squeeze it to make sure there was nothing else in there. It wasn't nice."

The obvious security personnel were backed up by armed agents. Two FBI agents stopped to ask Orlando if everything was all right. A half hour later, two armed U.S. Customs agents came by. All three airport police bomb dogs were on duty.

Still, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson thinks security must be beefed up.

After touring airports in Orlando and Tampa on Wednesday, the Florida Democrat said he would recommend to the Senate Commerce Committee today that it examine a number of changes.

Among them, Nelson said, were that armed sky marshals be assigned to most airline flights, that curbside check-ins be resumed under much stiffer security, and that the management of security screening be shifted from the airlines to a federal agency or to individual airports.

A return to curbside check-in and a shift in responsibility for security screeners were proposed earlier this week by Louis Miller, executive director of the Hillsborough County Aviation Authority.

After conducting Nelson's tour, Miller said the screening system should remain under federal control, but shifted from the Federal Aviation Administration to a police agency such as the FBI.

One clear problem caused by the more intense security is in the older airsides at TIA. At Airside C, the current home of Delta Air Lines, TIA's second-largest carrier, there is only one security arch and only one X-ray belt.

Conditions weren't rushed on Wednesday; although 85 percent of TIA's scheduled flights got into the air, planes ranged only from 28 to 66 percent full. Nonetheless, passenger lines backed up, nearly filling the shuttle lobby, and bags backed up on the belt. Smaller carry ons, like purses, fell to the floor as larger bags smacked them. Some bowls transporting keys, change and cell phones through X-ray went flying.

Laura Cody of Palm Harbor was caught up in the crush as her bag was hand checked and X-rayed three times.

"They kept thinking they saw something weird," Cody said. "That's fine. I left plenty of time."

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