I had a similar experience recently @glenalbrethsen, watching my 87 year old mother take an age to get through security, on her way home to Malta.
it was horrible. It is extremely uncomfortable for her to stand still and for some reason she had to go in the scanner and try to hold her arms over her head. Something that is impossible for her to do nowadays and makes her dizzy.
Then she was scanned and had a partial pat down. All while I had to stand helplessly and watch.
I so wanted to run through and scream "take your hands off her". Fortunately, my mum took it in her stride and, as she didn't mention it afterwards I wasn't going to bring it up and ask what the problem was.
One of the things I must miss from the "old days" is taking the kids up to the cock pit to meet the pilot and look around. I was able to do that a number of times with my daughter my never with my son. 😢
Hey, @gillianpearce.
I couldn't see any of what happened to my wife, or I might have jumped the barricade. I'd like to think I would have tried, anyway. I just saw her disappear (she's short), and then it took a while for her to come to a point on the other side where I could see her again. I called her and she told me what happened. She even laughed. I didn't find it one bit funny.
I'm not sure what these people think they're doing. I'm sure most of them are trying to follow protocols and it's better safe than sorry, but there's a lot of room for abuse of power and in the end it usually ends in humiliation.
I know in the U.S. profiling is considered a bad thing. Lumping everyone together because of a few bad actors is wrong, so I can't be totally in favor of such a thing. But the law of probabilities does exist, and when the vast majority of terrorism is linked to a certain sector of society, and when zero 87-year-old women have been involved in it, it just doesn't sit well. That's going beyond being careful or safe, or even fair. You can't be accused of profiling or discrimination if you're sending the 87-year-old to a pat down along with everyone else. However, 99.9% of us are not going to blow up a plane we're on.
They need to figure out a way to reduce the risk of the 0.1% without humiliating the rest of us.