More Fun With the TSA

Reagan National, 8:30 a.m., Monday: The blue-shirt who checks IDs tells me that I can put away my boarding pass, that I won't need it until the gate. I say, "Really? Don't I have to carry it through the scanner?" She says, no, there's a new directive, issued May 13th, that TSA agents no longer have to check boarding passes as passengers walk through the scanners. Boarding passes only need to be checked at the entrance to security checkpoints (which, as I've pointed out elsewhere, are the most dangerous places in America).

Okay, fine.

LaGuardia, 5:30 p.m: I walk through the scanner without waving my boarding pass. The blue-shirt facing me says, "Boarding pass." I say: "I thought, per your May 13th directive (I actually used the word "per") that TSA agents no longer require passengers to show their boarding passes twice at the same security checkpoint.

"Where'd you get that?"

"Washington National."

"I never heard that. Maybe different states have different rules." Yes, of course, because, as we know, the TSA is not federal, but a state agency.

I'm trying to figure out exactly what the rule is, and I'll post TSA's comments when and if they come.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2009/10/more-fun-with-the-tsa/28658/