Wednesday, February 13, 2008

TSA in Denver - How often does this happen that we don't see it.

So I'm returning from the RMOUG today. It's been a bad trip to be honest because I sprained my ankle and it hurts sooo bad. I have pain pills for it but they loop me out so bad that I had to cancel my presentation today. I apologize to ANYONE who was wanting to talk about 11g.

Anyway I was at the airport and there was a flight to Atlanta at the gate next to mine. They had loaded the entire airplane up. Then I watched as they pulled two passengers off. One was a young lady (perhaps 15) and the other was her mother (a single mother taking her only daughter on a cruise).

Come to find out, after talking to the mother, that both were supposed to get secondary screening from TSA. The bozo's at the TSA screening area didn't notice that BOTH of them needed to get screened, and missed one of them. (Did I mention that in this same trip I overheard a couple talking about TSA missing a ceramic knife that the sister of one of them was carying through the screening area?).

Delta caught the error (after boarding the two) and pulled them off the airplane. The poor 15 year old was crying her heart out as she was de-boarded which is why I noticed the whole thing in the first place. Apparently the brain trust at Delta has a policy that they do not hold planes for TSA and our brilliant brains at TSA took their jolly time getting to the gate. If TSA had made an effort to get to the gate on time, they might have made it. I will give kudo's to the CSR at the gate though, he kept his cool and was very kind. He was just following policy.

What just floored me is that after the TSA folks got there, they didn't DO anything except talk to the Delta agent..... all this while the two were just sitting there and the plane backed out of the gate.

Now, Delta has them rebooked on a red-eye, so they will not be missing the cruise unless something else happens, but they will be exhausted from the experience. To me this was stupidity on the part of TSA and Delta. These two were clearly no threat, they were not even searched after pulling them off the airplane and the airplane only would have needed to wait about 5 minutes more for them.

Someone needs to bust some TSA behind in Denver over this, and Delta needs to reconsider it's policies and procedures with respect to situations like this.

2 comments:

Mark Bobak said...

Robert,

I just returned from my first RMOUG yesterday. (I stayed the weekend after to do a little skiing and see some sights.) I'm sorry to hear your trip went so badly. I was looking forward to hearing you speak and meeting you. Hope you feel better soon.

-Mark

Robert Freeman said...

I was so sad to miss doing the 11g presentation! I really enjoy meeting people at conferences and the like.

My foot is slowly getting better. Got some great pain meds that really helped. I'm off of them now, and can actually walk.

I'll be in Denver in a couple of months for Collaborate! Hope to see everyone there!

 
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