Airport Security

by Shervin A., Wilmington, DE With hundreds of thousands of passengers traveling each day in the United States, you might think that airport security would be a priority. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Many of the major airports have old, outdated technology for scanning luggage. Plastic explosives easily get through. The personnel hired to monitor security are a joke. Most don't care about their job. They just want to sit there and get paid.

A personal incident angers me when I recall it. Last year, I was traveling to Amsterdam. I could tell from the minute I saw the guy at the ticket counter that he was going to be problem. I have no idea why they hired him. The spiked blonde hair didn't took too professional and he wasn't very polite, either. He took a look at our passports and when he realized that my mom and I were born in Iran, he automatically assumed that we were terrorists on a suicide mission to blow up the plane.

With just over two hours before departure, he ordered us to wait until a security guard came to check our luggage. My mom is a heavy packer and we had five gigantic suitcase that weighed a good 60 pounds each. This lady came over and opened the luggage. She shuffled through everything looking for a "bomb." It took her at least 45 minutes to finish. My mom and I were enraged. All the other passengers were simply asked if they had anything illegal in their suitcases. All of them obviously said no - duh! Any one of them could have easily hidden a bomb in their luggage and no one would have checked!

Now, whether that incident was purely for security reasons or just plain racist isn't clear to me. But it just shows that security at our airports is completely screwed up. Eventually, a plane will blow up because of it. I'm sure that I'm not the only one who has suffered because of inept security. The scary thing is that it will take a lot of money and time to upgrade airport security. However, you may conclude from my personal experience that old technology is not the main problem. It's the clueless, untrained staff who work at the airports. Their carelessness will prove to be fatal when a plane explodes, killing hundreds of innocent people. Don't think I'm being pessimistic: it could easily happen.