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Comment by Devilboy | Hacker News Reader

I think he means on arrival in the US, not before you get on the plane.

I'm theorizing here - maybe someone can answer - would the flight & airport in question be laid out such that, once passing through immigration, you were still in the secure area of the airport and able to board another aircraft, or was there a choice between "connecting flights" and "exit".

The only rational explanation I can come up with would be if the airport layout demanded this - but it seems unlikely.

This also seems like something that the author or someone with authority would have mentioned, as it's a deal-breaker that would likely have diffused the situation immediately.

You would still be in the secure area. The problem is that coming from an international flight you wouldn't necessarily be groped for explosives.

It's a good assumption that if they have explosives on a plane flying over the US, they are going to use it before they land.

The problem then is that the TSA is tasked with protecting an area that also contains people who do not intend to board aircraft - the airport design is faulty - there is no way for people who just need to pass customs and leave the airport to do so without exposing them to the secure departure area. (That shouldn't be an international airport in my book)

Plenty of airports were built before the need (perceived or real) for a security zone was discovered, Cincinnati being one of those. In some cases, airports have managed to come up with a reasonable design to cover all needs, but in some there are some not-very-ideal solutions in use. Cincinnati, again, apparently being one of these.

I think his point is that some other countries don't take the latest TSA requirements seriously, and if you come from one of those countries, the TSA will screen you because of that.

I don't understand the point of that point. If the reason for the X-ray machines is to stop people from smuggling dangerous materials onto planes and using them to cause harm, scanning people after they get off the plane is the most literal analogue I've ever seen for shutting the barn door after the horses have fled.

Imagine a daycare center that had a policy of running background checks on its employees only once they quit. Would you feel like they were taking the children's safety very seriously?

I'm guessing the issue is that the physical layout of the terminal is designed under the assumption that everyone arriving on an international flight is connecting to a domestic flight, and CVG was not their final airport. In that case, they want people screened by US personnel against US policies before boarding those domestic flights.

It still seems like a waste of time and money for the TSA to screen people who are just going to go out to the bag claim though and not board another flight.

I don't do much (hardly any) international travel, but in my experience, in US airports the international arrivals and domestic departures are physically separate security zones. You can't get off an international flight and hop on a domestic flight without going through security again.

At PDX you need to clear the international arrival zone and go through TSA screening even to depart from an internation gate. Departing from an international gate requires the same screening for domestic flights. Arriving at international gates looks like the following:

Gate -> Corridor -> Customs -> International Baggage Claim (Explicitly so you can get your bags re-screened by US personnel) -> TSA screening -> airport concourse -> onward travel via domestic gates / onward travel via international gates / exit

The last time I went through this was from a flight from AMS. So coming from Schipol does not free you from the requirement to reclear security on the way out of the airport.

The International and Domestic security zones are not distinct, all international arrivals are required to be re-screened by US personnel before rejoining the regular security zone, no matter which onward destination.

It would be a waste of time - but if the airport layout would give those people access to the secured area of the airport, and there was no way to channel the connecting passengers separately from the exiting passengers, then you'd pretty much have no choice but to screen every arrival to your security standards. That would just be poor architectural decisions.

Perhaps the point of scanning the people flying is to justify spending money on the machines? The machines are being pushed in part by people who used to run the TSA, after all.

Back in '02, when people were still at high-paranoia following the initial terrorist attacks, my wife and I were flying to Bali via Japan and the Hong Kong. The plane landed in Japan only for refueling, but they pulled everyone off the place, ran us through metal detectors, and back onto the plane, making our departure an hour late.

I can't imagine what they were trying to do. Were they afraid we had fabricated weapons of our own in the 14+/- hours we'd been on the plane? What if we'd just left those weapons at our seats?

I know they will if you land at your first destination in the US and are catching a connecting flight - they will run you through security a second time before letting you into the secure area of the airport where you might board another aircraft - but that's only if you are connecting.

Then again - my experience travelling says this has a lot more to do with airport layout dictating security procedure more than anything else - some airports seem to change policies every time I fly - one time I have to collect my bags, the next I don't, the next I can actually just catch an international connection, the next time I can't without getting my bags, etc (all through the same airport through the past few years)

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