AIRPORTS Bloomberg Pursuits November 25, 2019
hereis a car-door-to-plane-dooraffair, 57
muchlikeflyingprivate.Andsincethe
wholeoperationis pre-TSA,passengers
cangetdeliveryservicefromNobuor
a one-on-onesessionwiththeirper-
sonaltailor.
Sowhobuysin?About50%ofthe
membersarebusinessexecs;theoth-
ersarecelebsescapingthepaparazzi.
MeghanMarkle’smomusedthefacility
enroutetotheroyalwedding,andJamie
Foxxis a fan,too.
③Security
trainingis
nojoke
Tounderstandthebarelycontained
pandemonium that exists on a daily
basis at LAX, take a deeper look at
the numbers. In 2018 almost 42 mil-
lion people were screened by the TSA
team, outpacing the country’s next
busiest, JFK, by 8.6 million travelers.
The airport sees about 120,000 depart-
ing passengers and more than 100,000
checked bags every day. The third week
of June broke LAX’s traffic records, with
almost 950,000 travelers departing in
seven days.
Processing that many people
requires immense training. The air-
port’s 2,700 screening agents cut their
teeth in noncertified positions first:
checking IDs or serving as divestiture
officers (the person yelling, “Laptops
out, shoes off!”). Once they’ve shown
their stuff, employees get a two-month
advanced education, which includes a
two-week course on X-ray technology
and mastering proper pat-downs.④ You may
not need a
heartbeat to
get on a plane
“I truly thought I had seen it all until
I got a call that there was a person
who had seemingly passed away while
waiting to clear security,” says KeithJeffries,LAX’sfederalsecuritydirector.
Inactuality, the old man had died ear-
lier, and his family bought him a plane
ticket, strapped him into a wheelchair,
and tried to sneak him back to his native
Mexico for burial. Turns out, it’s not as
unusual as it sounds—a one-way flight
can be substantially cheaper than ship-
ping a corpse. But these cases don’t
make it to the gate; ultimately, they get
processedbytheLAPDandturnedover
tothecountycoroner.
Onenonliving passenger did make
it through security—with everyone’s
approval. In December 2014, LAX was
the first airport to have a humanoid
robot come through. “Athena” had a
ticket to Frankfurt, two human escorts,
and a proper German passport. And in
case you’re wondering, she sat in pre-
mium economy, though her functions
were turned off during flight. (She didn’t
have an airplane mode, apparently.)⑤ Where do
they take your
banned stuff?
If you’ve ever had precious cargo seized
for being 0.1 ounce over the liquid limit,
you’ve paid for it not just in lost sham-
poo (or drinks, or jam) but in taxpayer
dollars, too. “It costs money to store,
then throw away every surrendered
item,” says one of my TSA colleagues.
“We can’t take for granted that there’s
actually water in each plastic bottle, so
we have to dispose of each as though it
could be lethal.” Gels and aerosols cost
even more, as they have to be discarded
at a special hazardous waste site. It all
adds up to a $9 million bill each year.
All that’s to say: No, I wasn’t secretly
enjoying your forbidden stash with
myTSAcolleagues.Especiallywhenit
comesto“metalsandsharps”—aself-
explanatory category of banned goods.
Most agents report confiscating three
to five of these items during the typical
eight-hour shift, and I saw 40 knives in
my first hour. One switchblade had been