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This protest might not slow down security lines. These new scanners are pretty slow to begin with. When I went through SFO recently it took 1-2 minutes to go
by trunnell 16y ago
This protest might not slow down security lines. These new scanners are pretty slow to begin with.
When I went through SFO recently it took 1-2 minutes to go through the scanner. The slowness seemed to be a combination of the instructions given to the flyer for positioning themselves inside the device, the slowness of the device itself, and the slack in the line.
In any case, I remember thinking that a pat-down might actually be quicker.
- barrkel 16y agoThe speed of the magnetometer lines have always been gated by the hand-luggage x-ray machine, in my experience; usually a magnetometer arch is shared by two lines. To hear some people claim that these things will speed up the lines is pretty ludicrous, especially considering that you need to take more stuff out of your pockets. And then there's the wonderful cost implications. The machines are already 20x more expensive than the magnetometer arches, as I understand it, so the total cost to make up the numbers (to get the speed back through parallelism) could be 40x or more, tens of millions for every decent-sized checkpoint.
- icefox 16y agoRecently when I choose not to go through the digital strip search they spent a good 20 minutes going through my stuff, asking me questions and getting a pat down.
- cheald 16y agoThe point is that if enough people are opting out, it's going to be a lot harder for them to take the time to individually harass people.
- prodigal_erik 16y agoNot harder, just slower, and why would they care about that? There are many people with enough empathy and diligence to feel bad if you miss your flight. But I don't see how any of them could stomach working for TSA.