TSA vs Rest of Us

 On the way back to Phoenix I cleared the TSA screening at the Orlando Airport a little after 4pm Saturday. After you are screened you go to the train and wait to take the train to the gates. About one hour later someone was going through with a camera in their backpack and the camera battery popped and started smoking. They set the bag down and a TSA agent moved it away. Apparently people started running and knocked over some stanchions which some thought sounded like gun shots.

At this point you would expect the owner of the bag to have to answer some questions or if TSA wanted to they could recheck passengers who had just gone through by stopping the trains and rechecking them before they left for  the gates.  Instead they went for Plan C. Planes that were taxing out were returned to their gates.  Planes that were loading were unloaded. All checked passengers in terminal, at the gates, in the restaurants, on planes that had to return to their gates, and on planes that were loading  were sent back on the train to be rechecked. Not just our terminal but all terminals at the Orlando Airport. Thousands of passengers had to be rechecked.

It took just a little over two hours to evacuate and even while this was going on the PA system kept announcing that there is no emergency, and that they were trying to get back to normal operations. None of the TSA, Police, and security guards seemed to know what was happening. One TSA person came through with a bull horn saying to check the monitors and another came through yelling for us to check with our airlines. I called my wife and she went online and found out the problem of the battery before the evacuation was done.

About four hours later they started to recheck passengers. Twenty four flights were canceled, twenty seven flights were diverted, and many more were delayed several hours. This means that many other airports had to cancel or delay flights. I was fortunately after several delays my flight left several hours later.

The rescreening was interesting. On my first time through I was patted down because the metal detecter had picked up the bits of metal in my body and my bag was set aside for inspection. Apparently a large candy bar in the bag looked like a problem. On the recheck I went through with coins in my pocket with no problem at the metal detector and I was not patted down and the bag was not set aside for any inspection.

Note to TSA
You do realize that terrorist could stop our entire air transport system but just shorting out a camera battery in the check line at several of our airports simultaneously or even worse use the chaos of  rescreening to get material through the checkpoint.

Note to Photographers
Just about all our cameras now have a battery. Turn your camera off and don't just throw spare batteries in your bag. Spare batteries should be individually packed and insulated from other batteries or metal. Also don't pack them where they can be crushed or pierced in any way. If one is damaged and pops or starts smoking don't set your bag down and run. Get it out so it can be dealt with without creating a panic. There have been 17 cases this year of battery exploding on planes and flight crews are being trained to handle them and the TSA should also be able to if they know it is a battery not a bomb.

Monitors after evacuation

Part of the waiting Crowd

8:54 about to start rescreening