How to spot an American at the airport

I want to weigh in, briefly, on the controversy of “enhanced” pat downs and body scanners at American airports. Over the past week this has consumed 24-hour news channels; it seems almost every person who flew in the past week has been interviewed. I thought I’d contribute to the media hysteria and post regarding my personal experiences.

When I lived in Europe the sure fire way to identify a fellow American at the airport was to look for the people taking their shoes off. Taking your shoes off to go through airport security is not required at European airports. Personally, I have never had an unpleasant experience flying anywhere, but I have found differences in the attitudes of security officials and one experience in Europe particularly stands out.

When I entered the Schengen Zone for the first time through Zurich and made my way through security as I changed terminals, I made the mistake of taking my shoes off and was quickly informed that this was not necessary. As I walked through the metal detectors I was selected for a pat down. The security official approached me and asked “Deutshe or English?” When I replied, “English” he said “congratulations, you’ve been selected.” I was taken to a booth with a curtain where we both joked about the pat down.  This was not an enhanced pat down that the TSA now performs in the U.S.

Next, I made my way to passport control. Here I was asked if my grandfather was Swiss because of my last name and had a brief chat about my heritage. The official then told me I was going to enjoy Florence and to have a nice trip. Both of these experiences lightened my mood and made my travel experience on that long day very pleasant.

All TSA agents are not grumpy and are just regular people trying to do their jobs. Also, I’ve had my fair share of unpleasant European officials, but a lesson can be taken from my experience in Switzerland.

I am not familiar with TSA training, but my intuition tells me that interpersonal skills are not the focus. This training leads to a guilty until proven innocent attitude and this is what needs to be reversed. This attitude compounds the stress of an already stressful process that many people are not used to.  Travelers should not feel like they are under arrest when they are going through airport security.

It is a difficult counterfactual experiment to estimate how many terrorist attacks would have occurred without increased security measures. The TSA can stop attacks through both prevention and deterrence. I am not opposed to these increased measures, but sympathize with people’s frustration. Some people are recommending profiling, as is practice in Israel, and this would be wrong. We do our best in the U.S. to build a free, secure and equal society and profiling would be a step backwards.

TSA officials, for the most part, are dealing with people, not terrorists. Their training should focus equally on this fact with security. More “how are you todays” and “enjoy your trips” can go a long way. I think we’d be amazed at how willingly people cooperate when asked politely and feel it is their choice rather than compulsory. The solution is simple: remind the public that security often has a price that is freedom and do it with a smile on your face.