| | |  Travel & Outdoors | December 2009 
Innocent Fliers: TSA has Gone Plane Insane
 Carolyn Salazar, Beth Stebner, Amber Sutherland, & Tom Namako - NYPost
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December 29, 2009
| | 'Absolute chaos' at NYC airports | |
Airline passengers thwarted the Christmas Day terror plot - and now passengers are getting the shaft.
International fliers are falling victim to insanely repetitive security questions, invasive pat-downs and overzealous flight attendants who restrict their every move, passengers fumed yesterday.
"They were asking us what we had for lunch," said Long Island resident Jim Hyndman, whose flight from Brussels to JFK was delayed an hour because of the massive security line.
Walter Saraniecki, 25, a trader who lives in Chelsea and took a flight from Prague to JFK, said, "They interviewed every single person. They were hassling people who didn't speak English. They were asking stupid questions."
Most passengers decried the dual security checks at airports, where Transportation Security Administration agents were instructed in an internal memo to check every single carry-on bag and use "behavior detection" questions on every passenger.
At the Toronto airport yesterday morning, every US-bound passenger was subjected to a pat-down, and luggage was inspected by hand. Officials there have banned most carry-on luggage for fliers headed to the United States.
"It was absolute chaos," said Brooke Rai, 23, a student from New Jersey who slogged through security at JFK. "There was no organization - people were cutting lines, agents were rude. It was just chaos."
The most humiliating measures included a directive to pat down everyone, a procedure that many passengers said came startlingly close to areas no stranger should go.
"I got patted down, and it's too personal! They really go for your personal areas," said Sam Lazarus, 24, a student from Park Slope, Brooklyn.
JetBlue went so far as to shut off its popular 36-channel live-TV and satellite-radio entertainment system over the weekend. The feds didn't want an airborne attacker to see a channel displaying a flight's location, sources told The Post. The system was restored yesterday.
The measures were implemented on Friday, when Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, tried to blow up a Northwest Airlines plane as it approached Detroit.
While passengers said some in-flight restrictions - like not allowing anyone to use the restroom or have blankets and pillows one hour before landing - were eased, they noted flight attendants mostly adhered to the overbearing rules.
"A guy tried to get something from his bag in the last hour of the flight and a stewardess ran after him and moved him to the front of the plane," said Anna Shikhman, a 46-year-old who took a flight from Istanbul to JFK yesterday.
"They took our pillows and blankets in light of the events, and said we couldn't move until the final stop," she added.
A spokesman for the Port Authority said there was no increase in delayed flights in the New York area yesterday.
But fliers said it was just a matter of time before tensions between them and security agents and flight crews reached a boiling point.
On one US Airways flight from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, to Phoenix, passenger James Van Dellen snapped a photo of a long line of fliers clogging the aisles of a plane to get to the restroom - all to beat the new restrictions.
"I found it stupefying how one rule - 'Don't congregate in aisles and galleys' - is so easily forgotten in lieu of another," Van Dellen said.
Chris Milo, 39, a recording artist from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, who flew from Lisbon to Newark, said, "Just when we thought we were getting past the shoe-bomber guy, this jerk comes along and makes flying awful again.
"I was watching a movie and they made me turn it off in the middle. The only thing that's left now is for everyone to get a full cavity search," he added.
The TSA does have plans to roll out "whole body" devices that use "millimeter waves" to detect any banned materials on a passenger, an agency source said.
About 40 are installed now at 19 airports, and the TSA wants to deploy 150 by early in 2010, the source said.
Additional Reporting by Bill Sanderson
tom.namako(at)nypost.com |
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