Letter to the Transportation Security Administration

I found myself really annoyed by some TSA officials (run, I believe by the Department of Homeland Defense) at JFK airport in New York today on my way back to Stavanger. I wrote a letter of complaint as I waited to board my flight and I will be sending it off to the TSA as soon as I get a chance. Below I quote my letter in full, which outlines what happened and my recommendations to the TSA. Recommendations for changes welcome.

To whom it may concern,

I am writing to recommend some changes to the security checking procedures for passengers traveling from American airports. Some or all of what I write here may only apply to the security check for gates A2-A6 in Terminal 4 of JFK airport in New York City, New York.
On June 1st, 2004 I travelled from New York City to Stavanger, Norway, beginning with a flight to Amsterdam leaving out of gate A6 at 18:15. At about 16:30 I reached the security check that all passengers must pass through. I was extremely disappointed by the disorganized mess that I encountered there. Perhaps a dozen officers of the Transportation Security Administration were staffing three or four X-Ray machines. A line of passengers were lined up to pass through airport security in an age when threats of terrorism require great vigilance on the part of security personnel.
During this process I was able to identify four things all passengers needed to do:

• Remove their shoes and place them on the X-Ray machine, without placing these shoes into any container
• Remove their laptops from their carry-ons, place them in a container which in turn is put through the X-ray machine
• Put their carry-on luggage through the X-ray machine, without putting it into a container
• Passengers were asked to put any metal objects etc. into their carry-on luggage.

Of these tasks, only one of them, the last, had a sign in English which offered any instructions.
When I approached the security check, I was horrified to see how incredibly chaotically things were being run, despite the fact that the lines were fairly short. This was in stark contrast to the smooth ticket check-in and check-in baggage security I had experienced so far that day.
A host of passengers, many of which were international passengers who may not speak English well, found themselves being yelled at in multiple directions by TSA officers. The officers, who emphatically did NOT behave in a polite and helpful manner and yelled loudly at passengers from a distance in English (my reason for emphasizing this will become clear) to perform the tasks above, usually in a tone of voice which implied that the passengers should know that the above tasks are required of them (which, I assure you, they are not in many airports in the world).
When some passengers didn’t understand what was being asked of them, they found themselves yelled at by even more voices and in some cases I saw TSA officers run over to them and grab their belongings and otherwise behaving in an unnecessarily aggressive manner. Despite my fluency in English, even I got some of the instructions mixed up, placing my shoes in a container instead of directly on the belt. I personally had no further problems going through, but as I saw the disgraceful and disrespectful treatment that many of the international passengers were receiving when they were already confused and unnerved by the shouting and aggressive nature of the TSA officers, I was, quite frankly, downright ashamed.
After proceeding through security, I approached an idle officer and made a simple recommendation:

Can I recommend that you write some of these many instructions [regarding shoes, laptops, containers, etc.] on a sign in the area where the passengers are lining up. If necessary, can I suggest that you write these instructions in English and translated into several major languages [as they often are in international airports] so that passengers waiting in line can prepare themselves better to move efficiently through the security check.

When I suggested this to the officer he turned away and told me, over his shoulder, that “We already thought of that, but we have a lot of languages here.”

When I suggested that this was precisely why the current system was far from adequate and terribly inefficient he simply repeated that, “You may not have noticed but we have a lot of people speaking different languages here.”

I think that it is fairly obvious that this is exactly the problem with not writing these instructions up on a sign (if need be in several languages). When half a dozen American officers are yelling at confused passengers in English, many of whom may not understand the language (especially when spoken fast, in a loud voice, and in a stressful situation) the impatient and impolite officers may only be contributing to the chaos and inefficiency of the security check.

There is no excuse for what I witnessed today. Traffic was not at all heavy and the lines were short. The attitude of the officers was disgraceful. I hope that they were simply having a bad day. The purpose of my letter today, however, is to submit for your consideration two simple suggestions:

• Make sure all security checks at airports have written instructions in English, and where possible, other major world languages describing the various tasks expected of passengers at the security check.
• I suggest that officers do not yell at passengers, rudely grab their possessions, and instead maintain a polite and helpful disposition as they guide passengers through the final stage of their departure.