Flight security's prying fingers touch raw nerve

By ROGER FRANKLIN

NEW YORK - "Why don't you explore my crotch?" I asked the middle-aged woman kneeling in front of me.

She was having none of it. Removing my shoes and running questing hands over my buttocks evidently were acts essential to the security of air travel in America. But my private parts must have been declared a demilitarised zone by the field marshals of the increasingly irrational campaign to foil the sort of hijackers who did so much damage to this country's sense of security.

Even before September 11, flying in the US was seldom pleasant. Cramped seats, abrasive cabin crews, delays and lost luggage were the norm. These days, however, absurdity has been piled on top of incompetence.

It really is an irony. Mohammad Atta and his terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center, but did not ground the air-transport system for more than a few days. American authorities and their legion of minimum-wage martinets are ruining the industry by themselves.

Sure, some 30,000 planes take off every day in the US, but many are all but empty. Rather than run the gauntlet of airport indignities, Americans are turning to cars, trains and buses.

I can speak with some authority. An ailing mother-in-law and a sudden funeral obliged me to make two trips between New York and Florida. The first, a month or so after September 11, was marked more by nervousness than annoyance. The second, last week, was far worse - anxiety compounded by the irrationality that has become official policy.

At first, at least until you have been forced to use your nose spray to prove it isn't a bottle of bio-chemical toxins, the security measures make a sort of sense.

At the security checkpoint, as matrons are patted down like shoplifters, you realise things are getting out of hand.

Take what happened last week in Tampa, where my wife's mother was laid to rest. While ambling away from the ticket counter for the return flight, I wondered why the baggage clerk had scrawled "S" on my boarding pass. It didn't take long to find out. It stood for "search".

"You will be taking off the overcoat and placing it in the scanner," I heard a female security guard say. Surely she couldn't be talking to me, since I was wearing a sports jacket? A pair of rude hands spun me around and the search began.

Trouser cuffs were turned out, lapels squeezed. She ran gloved hands through what remains of my hair. My pockets were emptied and my reading material appraised. My belt buckle was loosened and inspected, my armpits plumbed. When a pair of unexpected hands parted my buttocks (no doubt to see what would tumble down the leg of my trousers), violated instinct made me jump.

"You must cooperate," the guard ordered. It was then that the absurdity became too much for silence to bear.

"Look," I said, "How many middle-aged, overweight Australian journalists have flown jetliners into tall buildings lately?" Big mistake.

"We do not discriminate," she said. "This is America."

I couldn't resist: "So why aren't you patting down my crotch? I could have tucked something nasty in there."

It was then, 10 minutes after the search began, that my tormentor's response made a mockery of the procedure: "Oh no, sir," she said. "Not with your wife at hand to observe my hand actions."

So there it is, a game plan for hijackers: stash plastic knives in your underpants - and always bring a spouse on that final, one-way ride. The authorities will appreciate your cooperation.