Looking Beyond the Cutlery to Improve Airport Security – The New York Times
In recent years, most of us would agree, the Transportation Security Administration has made significant improvements in customer service at airport checkpoints. But that doesn’t mean that all the old problems have been solved.
Look at my experience last month at the tiny airport in Ely, Nev., which has a single departing flight a day but two T.S.A. officers on hand because the rules state that two are needed there for every plane departure.
On the day I was there, three passengers — I among them — passed through security. A Beechcraft 1900D twin-engine turboprop airplane operated by
Great Lakes Airlines waited on the dusty airfield. After I got through the checkpoint, I heard a screener call out, “Fork!”Both screeners were standing by the X-ray screen peering at the image of a fork in the carry-on bag of the woman behind me. “You can’t take thate that on a plane,” one told her.
