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I was telling someone much younger than myself that airports didn’t always completely suck to go through. I explained how the TSA wasn’t a thing and the experience was closer to getting on a bus or a train pre 9/11.
He had a hard time wrapping his head around it because he’s never experienced it.
Made me feel very old.
As a post 9/11 adult, moving to a place with really good and smooth flowing train infrastructure made me so frustrated with the stressful and unnecessary security theatre of airports worldwide
Especially since it's just theater. It's just to make you feel fucking oppressed. Fuck!
I am legitimately surprised that the TSA has not been quietly disbanded by now
Too many opportunities for skimming off the top to let go.
people won't fly if they don't go through the security theater beforehand. they wildly overestimate the likelihood of terrorism because the impact is very high, so if you don't make them take their shoes off, throw out their water and do a little security dance they'll assume they're going to be murdered.
I have yet to meet someone saying thank you while being asked to walk through the metal detector a second time. I think it’s more along the lines of “this decision was never up to us.”
Yeah, those changes came while Constitutional law was suspended. The Patriot Act was a coup in and of itself.
people won't fly if they don't go through the security theater beforehand
I can't speak for others, but I would.
Come the fuck on....
Eh, maybe you're right. It's been a while. Still, hard to overstate the raw terror in the first couple years, maybe now it's just entrenched bureaucracy
Take your shoes off. Take your belt off. Step into the scanner. Is that bottle more than 3.4 ounces? It looks like it's 3.42 ounces. Throw it out. Put your belt back on. Put your shoes back on. Did you pack your bags yourself? Have your bags been in your possession since you packed them? Take your shoes back off. In 2015 TSA missed 95% of weapons that a red team attempted to smuggle through security. Put your shoes back on.
Or you can pay them $100 and skip the line.
I traveled via airline before and after 9/11, and taking trains still amazes me: I can just walk up to it with my bag and get on??? I don't even have to go into the station if it's not between the parking and the platform! (The station I usually use is like that.) Plus the comfortable seat with legroom...
And then you tell them that baggage fees didn't used to be a thing and you can see their train of thought go off the tracks.
When I was very young, my mother took me and my twin to the airport, us wearing little backpacks.
She then handed us to a flight attendant and left.
The attendant took us to the air plane, sat us down, got us some juice. We sat and colored in books.
The attendant removed us from the plane and walked us towards the exit.
We then ran at grandmother and great grandmother. I'm fairly certain the attendant basically said "these yours?", they said yes, and we left.
This happened over several summers.
The thought of that happening today is impossible
I remember people going to drink at the terminal bar in the Orange County airport after work just because they liked it. No flight, no ticket, no TSA. Just liked the bar.
This also speaks to how they weren't always priced at two extra mortgages per drink.