TSA scans uniformed pilots, but airside caterers bypass all screening

Salon’s Patrick “Ask the Pilot” Smith describes the farcical state of airport security, in which uniformed pilots are prohibited from carrying a butter-knife, but airside catering and maintenance crews pass freely in and out of the “sterile” side of the airport without any screening:

All workers with airside privileges are subject to fingerprinting, a 10-year criminal background investigation and crosschecking against terror watch lists. Additionally they are subject to random physical checks by TSA. But here’s what one apron worker at New York’s Kennedy airport recently told me:

“All I need is my Port Authority ID, which I swipe through a turnstile. The ‘sterile area’ door is not watched over by any hired security or by TSA. I have worked at JFK for more than three years now and I have yet to be randomly searched. Really the only TSA presence we notice is when the blue-shirts come down to the cafeteria to get food.”

TSA’s double standard

(Thanks, Marilyn, via Submitterator)

(Image: Jetway, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from mbrubeck’s photostream)