Osama Bin Alkon, Checking In
We flew via Northworst to Detroit last night. At LAX, when I got up to the metal detectors, the woman checking IDs and boarding passes was on her cell phone – in speaker phone mode! – so I could hear the other person talking as she looked at my docs. Unbelievable. Which isn’t to say I thought this woman or many of those who pretend to give your documents a serious look before you go through the search process could find a bomb in a bomb factory. But can’t we at least have the pretense that we’re safer – not just more annoyed?

I wanted to ask the woman a question – if I needed to be holding my boarding pass as I went through the metal detector – but I didn’t quite know when to cut into the conversational stream. When I was through the metal detectors, I spoke to a TSA guy about speakerphonetta. He just shrugged and said the on-the-way-in checkers aren’t part of the TSA; the airlines hire them. He he knew her boss and would say something, but there were no guarantees that anything would be done by the company, “Aviation Safeguard.” Aviation Safeguard? What was she safeguarding, her social life?