Re: Global War on Terror Version 7 - The Nightmare that Threatens the World!!!
Whew...been a crazy week at work, so I haven't had a chance to relate my latest hilarity regarding security theater. Check out this string of failures that ultimately led to my having to take a different flight home from a business trip last week:
1) USAirways/American (in contention for "most poorly executed merger of all time" - see Gears, Grinding) FAILED to notify me that they had canceled the return leg of my trip (for no reason whatsoever, it will turn out)
2) The USA/A online system FAILED to notify me that my reservation had been canceled when I tried to check in online
3) The agent at the USA/A ticket counter FAILED to notice that my reservation had been canceled, and handed me the boarding pass for a *completely different* passenger with my same last name
4) I FAILED to notice that it wasn't my name on the boarding pass and went to security (be honest - who here checks that?). I did notice that it wasn't stamped "PreCheck" (which I've paid for), but I just chalked that up to USA/A's incompetence, which is completely plausible
5) I went in the PreCheck line anyway like the entitled business traveling jerk that I am. The TSA agent FAILED to notice that my boarding pass did not say PreCheck and also FAILED to notice that my ID did not match the name on the boarding pass
6) I grabbed some dinner and a beer, then got on the plane (still with the wrong boarding pass), and a few people after me, the boarding agent FAILED to notice that a second person got on the plane with the exact same boarding pass
So there I was - all the way on board a commercial flight with no reservation and the wrong boarding pass. Gotta hand it to the crack staff who are guarding our skies from terrorists!
By the time we all figured out what had happened, there was no time to get it straightened out but the plane was completely full anyway, so I had to take the next one. USA/A sure are lucky that I hadn't checked a bag - imagine the delay THAT would have caused. They never did come up with the reason why my original reservation had been canceled - but they didn't seem particularly surprised, either. "That just happens sometimes," turned out to be the official explanation.
Sheesh.
Lots of failures here, the most egregious by the ticket agent who gave you the incorrect pass by not verifying your full name (I assume same last name but a different first) and then again by the TSA agent who failed to do the same (again, assuming different first name).
The gate agent is less responsible since by then the assumption (perhaps not altogether reasonable) is that once you've received a boarding pass AND cleared TSA you are who the pass says you are. I almost never checked IDs at a gate as a gate agent but in all my time working a ticket counter I failed to give the proper boarding pass just once, and that was to a person who had both the same first and last names, highly improbable.
As far as mergers, you must have never traveled on Delta during their merger with Northwest, USAir, during theirs with America West, or worst of all, United following their takeover by Continental (it is Continental, just kept the United name for branding purposes). All were far worse so far by most accounts.
As for pre-check, many who pay are not getting it. I failed to get reasonable explanations for this from all the parties I checked with, other than it is a security measure of some sort, a test of the system. But it is happening to more passengers than it should. I was trained to tell passengers that if it happens more than 3 or 4 times, they should check directly with TSA to see if there is some sort of a problem with their name. Most airline reservation systems at the airport level cannot override a boarding pass that fails to issue as pre-check. There are some tricks I have tried once I have verified a person was truly pre-check and they succeeded occasionally. But not often. Working in a smaller airport it didn't matter greatly as far as time in the security line, but I'd hate to go through that at some airports.
*ETA* I'm also kind of curious about the real reason the flight was cancelled. In all my time I never have seen a flight cancellation that I could not explain with something more definitive than "that just happens sometimes." Granted the reason told the public is not always the truth, but I have always been able to track down the actual story, a story I didn't always share with the passengers. Curious as to what the cancelled flight was.
