Jaunted

Tags: Crime / Airport Security / TSA / Security Theater / Security / BOS / Drug Travel / → All Tags

Another TSA Fail As Agent Admits To Selling Drugs

We kind of feel bad for the TSA. Despite their attempts to keep us safe from ourselves, there are the few rogue agents that continue to bring bad news to the entire agency. However, that doesn’t mean that we are going to stop pointing out their missteps, like the former agent who recently admitted to selling drugs.

A former TSA employee at Boston's Logan Airport recently spilled the beans about selling OxyContin. The best part of the story is that he used his drug money profits to buy himself a Lotus—a fancy pants sports car. His best sales were during January 2006, when he sold about 200 of the pills while working for the government.

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Tags: TSA Watch / Airport Security / Whole Body Imagers / Security Theater / → All Tags

Your Body Belongs To TSA Now

April Fool? If only. When the TSA promised that its full-body scanners would only be used for secondary screening, it must have had its fingers crossed: Joe Sharkey reports in the New York Times that all metal detectors will be replaced with the clothes-penetrating devices because of good results from airports like Tulsa's, where they were offered as an alternative to the classic detectors.

TSA acting CTO Robin Kane even told Sharkey the agency got positive feedback from passengers, probably the ones who were standing behind the scanners looking at naked people.

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Tags: Airport Hell / TSA / Security Theater / Lists / HowTo / → All Tags

Five Ways To Speed Through Security

There are only three sure things in life: death, taxes, and the cluelessness of the guy in front of you at airport security. You can't do anything about that guy -- has he even flown since 9/11? -- but you can not be that guy with our tips to come through clean and quickly. Here are our Five Ways To Speed Through Security.

Know the roadblocks. Of course they're going to ask for your ID and boarding pass, so take it out of your wallet or purse and keep it in a death grip in your hand as you walk through. Thanks to the "shoe bomber", our shoes are going to have to come off, so if you're wearing lace-up boots, maybe start unlacing them while you're in line. And America, empty your freaking pockets before you set the X-ray off. You probably won't need your keys for the next six to eight hours anyway.

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Tags: Security Theater / Raed Jarrar / Airport Hell / JetBlue / TSA / → All Tags

Finally, An ACLU Victory That's Not Annoying

The TSA and JetBlue have agreed to settle a court case alleging that they illegally discriminated against a passenger because of his race and what was printed on his shirt. Raed Jarrar is walking away with $240,000, an amount that's neither offensively large nor pointlessly small.

Way back in August 2006, Jarrar rolled through JFK to catch a flight to Oakland, wearing a shirt that said "We will not be silent." Except along with the phrase written in English was the same thing written in Arabic. After fielding complaints about the shirt from other passengers, TSA and JetBlue employees asked him to remove it or miss his flight. Despite reluctantly agreeing to cover up with a new T-shirt purchased by JetBlue, the airline still moved Jarrar's seat from the front of the plane to the very back.

Needless to say, Jarrar was never a security threat. (And silk screened shirts, last time we checked, are allowed in both carry-on and checked baggage!)

In a press release, the ACLU is sure to remind everyone that its work continues in light of last week's AirTran incident:

Transportation officials have the important responsibility of ensuring that all flights are safe, but there is no reason that safety can't be achieved while at the same time upholding the civil rights and liberties of all airline passengers.

Related Stories:
· AirTran: Too Dumb To Be Evil? [Jaunted]
· New ABC Show Sadly More "Cops" Than "Airline" [Jaunted]

[Photo: ACLU]

Tags: Security Theater / AirTran / Airport Hell / → All Tags

AirTran: Too Dumb To Be Evil?

AirTran has already done a lot of fancy footwork this year over a New Year's Day incident in which it yanked nine passengers off a flight at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and, after they were questioned, refused to rebook them on another flight.

The passengers were apparently overheard discussing the safest place to sit on an airplane, which was reported as "suspicious activity," causing the pilot to contact the TSA and have them sweep the plane. And, oh yeah, and as every news story on this incident is required to point out, the nine passengers were Muslim, and all but one were American-born. This info is kind of relevant.

AirTran committed a colossal customer-service blunder in not allowing this party to rebook immediately once they'd been questioned and released, particularly considering their visibility as an inauguration carrier. And certainly, there is no love lost between us and the budgeteers, who once tossed a whole family off a flight because their 3-year-old was crying. But the way AirTran handled things was stupid, not completely racist or Islamophobic.

If anyone deserves a label, it's the supposedly hysterical passengers who, eavesdropping, heard something they didn't like, eyed its source and jumped to conclusions. But airlines make thousands of these judgment calls every day, and you can't fault them for being jittery.

What we can fault AirTran for is treating paying passengers as guilty until proven innocent. Instead of fixing its mistake quietly, with new tickets and free upgrades for all the inconvenienced passengers, top brass apparently lost its temper and let one of its gate agents decide to turn the family away after one of them became upset (and wouldn't you be?); the carrier only half-owned up to its mistake after all the press coverage. The sad truth is, you don't even have to be religious to get screwed by your airline--though it might help to pray for that refund.

Related Stories:
· 9 Muslims Are Pulled From Plane and Denied Re-entry; Airline Apologizes Next Day [NYT]
· AirTran Toddlergate Continues [Jaunted]
· Airline Spokesman Admits That AirTran Coach Seats Suck [Jaunted]
· AirTran coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo of an AirTran flight at Hartsfield-Jackson International: technicolorcavalry]

Tags: Airport Photo Shoots / Celeb Travel / Zac Efron / Security Theater / YYZ / → All Tags

Zac Efron Can Write His Name

"High School Musical 3" star Zac Efron is forced to confront his legacy as a teen heartthrob at Pearson International Airport in Toronto.

"HSM3" topped the box office last weekend for the second week in a row, besting a host of Halloween offerings from "The Haunting of Molly Hartley" to "Saw V." Youth, hope and optimism beats grim determination and appeals to fear? We've never seen that before.

Related Stories:
· Zac Efron Can't Even Mystic Tan Without His Bodyguards [Jaunted]
· Zac Efron's Oversize Carryon [Jaunted]
· Celeb Travel coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: JustJared]

Tags: Airport Security / Security Theater / SFO / San Francisco / California / TSA / → All Tags

Airport Security Photo Shoot: Invasion of the Body Scanners!

The green light was on, but a sad and lonely GE EntryScan machine waited for no passengers at San Francisco International on Monday night. We peeked ahead trying to see if we would be shunted through the machine, but to no avail!

While SFO wasn't on the list of airports getting body scanners, apparently the hulking machine that could destroy our privacy but allow us to keep on our clothes arrived early for its date with the TSA. Its presence suggests that despite security concerns raised by the ACLU, among others, body scans or required pat downs are in the future for air travelers.

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