by Nancy Linenkugel
Contributor
Air travel just isn’t that much fun anymore. With smaller capacity airplanes, less overhead compartment space, the need to pack more efficiently to avoid baggage charges, cramped passengers, and the seemingly endless security checks before boarding, I can think of other travel activities that are more enjoyable.
I had that image in mind when friend Janice told me about her recent airport adventure to visit family out-of-state. Upon arriving at the airport, she headed straight for the security checkpoint. To her surprise, the first TSA agent she encountered took one look at her ticket and ID and said cheerily, “We’ve selected you for our TSA Precheck privilege. You can move right through. Enjoy it.” Wondering what this meant, Janice didn’t just move along but instead asked, “So can I just go get on the plane?”
“Not exactly, ma’am,” replied the TSA agent. “Precheck means that you can skip the body scanners but just use the walk-through metal detector and you can keep your shoes on.”
Thinking she had won the lottery, Janice went around the body scanner, placed her bag on the X-ray belt and breezed through the metal detector. Janice got through just fine. Unfortunately, her bag did not. To her dismay, the X-ray handlers put her bag through a second time and then a third. Finally an agent took the bag to a side table and summoned Janice there. “Is this your bag, ma’am?”
“Yes,” a worried Janice replied.
“Would it be all right if I check out something inside the bag?” he asked. Feeling like she had no choice, Janice gave permission.
So the agent proceeded to go through every compartment and interior space of the bag, extracting items until he found what the X-ray machine said would be there: a steak knife. The agent held it up and said, “Were you planning to use this with your onboard meal?”
Janice was mortified and her mind raced to recall why there was a steak knife in her carry-on bag in the first place.
“Well, officer, this is really embarrassing, but you see, I took that knife with me to my office from home today because I had packed a grapefruit for lunch and needed something to cut it with. After work I came straight here to the airport and simply forgot the knife was still in my bag. Are you going to arrest me?”
“That sounds like an honest mistake and you don’t look dangerous, so no, we’re not going to arrest you. However, I hope that this knife wasn’t a special part of a set because I can’t give it back to you.”
“Not even if I’m in the Precheck privilege program today?” a hopeful Janice asked. “No ma’am. Sorry. Weapons aren’t allowed on the plane.”
So while Janice was in fairly good humor when she told me what happened, I suggested that the moral of the story might be that the Precheck program could have worked for her benefit if she had only pre-checked her bag before boarding.
“Oh, shut up, Nancy.”
[Sr. Nancy Linenkugel is a Sylvania Franciscan sister and chair of the department of Health Services Administration at Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio.]