26/11/2008 – Holiday Season Airport Security Reminder – Part 2 of 2 : Anatomy Of An Airport Security Checkpoint

Today starts the official “holiday travel season,” and it happens to be one of the busiest travel days of the year in the United States.  Over the next few days an estimated 4.5 million people will take to will choose to fly commercial airlines for their their travel during the Thanksgiving holiday, in the U.S.

Given this is the start of the ‘Holiday Travel Season,’ today seemed like a good time to post a reminder for travelers that know exactly how an airport security checkpoint works will help you get through faster, more effectively and with far less stress.

Hopefully reading ‘The Anatomy Of An Airport Security-Screening Checkpoint’ to make make process less stressful, easier and allow you to have a pleasant experience as you transit the airport.

So pack your bags, print your boarding pass from your home computer, read the following before you head out to the airport this Holiday Season.

1) The Line Up — The Line Up is simple. It is where passengers begin to line up to enter the security-screening checkpoint. You only enter the security-screening checkpoint once you have your boarding pass (yes, I have seen people get all the way through the line only to be turned away because they forgot to pick up their boarding pass).

2) The Barker — ‘The Barker’ is the security person who walks up and down the line ‘barking’ that you should have your boarding pass and valid photo identification out and available for inspection, that your laptop shouldbe out of your bag for x-ray inspection and that you are only entitled to only pass through security with no more than 3oz of liquids in each container, these containers must be in one single 1-quart bag and only one bag per person (hence ’3-1-1′ bag). These people may also split a single line into two lines, ask to see you boarding pass and at times just intimidate inexperienced travelers.

3) The ID Checker — This is the security person at the ‘entrance’ to the actual screening process. This person inspects your photo identification (usually a passport or drivers license) and your travel documents to make sure your name/face match those on your boarding pass.

4) The Long Table — The actual x-ray and metal detector process usually begins with a long table with plastic bins. This is where you remove your shoes (if required, the TSA does require it everywhere though); your laptop (if required); your 3-1-1 bag (now
virtually universal at all security). You also want to start making sure you have no metal on you, this means place your coins, keys, mobile phone, etc in a secure pocket, or inside one of your bags.

5) The Bins — Every ‘Long Table’ has ‘The Bins.’ ‘The Bins’ are where you’ll place your shoes, jacket, laptop and other lose items.

6) The X-Ray Scanner — At the end of the ‘Long Table” is the X-Ray Scanner and its conveyor belt. You want to place your bags and bins in the X-Ray scanner. Remember that bins go in vertically NOT horizontally. Make sure you witness your bags entering the X-Ray scanner before proceeding to the next step, and from that moment never take your eyes off the ‘exit’ of the x-ray scanner! Also remember to keep your boarding pass out and in your hand, do not place that through with your bags and bins.

7) The Metal Detector — Once your bags and bins are in the x-ray scanner (and your boarding pass is in your hand!) you’ll line up for the metal detector. Always wait outside the metal detector until the security personnel have motioned for you to pass through the metal detector. Before passing through pat yourself down to check for any metal items you may have missed. If you have any loose metal items declare them before you go through the metal detector.

7a) The Metal Detector Wand (if you set off the alarm)– ‘The Wand’ is a simple hand held metal detector used by security personnel to check passengers who have set off the metal detector multiple times. You are usually hold your arms out and are ‘traced’ with the wand to find the source of the metal.

8 ) The Rollout — ‘The Roll-Out’ is the end of the X-Ray scanner where you retrieve your bags-n-bins. Pay attention that you have all your items and that they have exited the x-ray scanner before walking off. Take your items methodically from the x-ray scanner and if you must ‘put yourself back together’ do so at the chair or benches away from the x-ray scanner. By moving away from the x-ray scanner you’re not only allowing other
passengers to proceed through, but you’re also moving to a calmer environment to put your shoes on, put your laptop away, put your 3-1-1 bag away and retrieve the small metal items you have placed in a pocket or a bag.

9) The Bag Check (should your carry on bag need a secondary screening) — There seem to be few words dreaded more than hearing “BAG CHECK LANE 7″ (or whatever lane you’re in) for many passengers. Honestly, I know what my carry on bags look like and I’m personally often more concerned when I don’t here this being yelled out while the x-ray security operator is viewing my bag. A bag check is really simple. You collect all your items, just as discussed in “8) The Rollout” and a security screener carries one of your bags, in your full view, to a separate table. At that table you must never touch your items unless instructed to do so, the screener will look through tour bag and possibly wipe it down with a swab intended to detect explosives. This is not a big deal; when they are done you repack your bag (unless you have explosives in which case you have a lot of explaining to do).

10) Have A Good Flight — ‘Have A Good Fight’ is just what it sounds like……..

Happy Holidays & Happy Flying!

26/11/2008 – Holiday Season Airport Security Reminder – Part 1 of 2 : Don’t Be An Airport Thief’s Target

Today is one of the busiest travel days of the year in the United States.  In the next few days 4.5 million people will take to the skies for during the Thanksgiving holiday, in the U.S., so this seemed like a good time to post a reminder on how to avoid becoming the victim of an airport thief

The majority of airport thefts happen in plain site and the majority of airport thefts happen in ‘secure’ areas.   How is this possible?   Flyers have a false sense of security in airports, flyers get flustered during the airport security screening process, and thieves prey on these easy opportunities.

For those traveling this Holiday Season, I’d like to offer some basic, and simple, tips to decreasing your chances of becoming the target of an airport thief.

My process for going through airport security is simple, and starts long before I get to the security area. Following is a break down of my steps

1) After checking in (or entering the airport if you have checked in at home), but before approaching the security line, empty your pant pockets of all metal, remove your phone and place them in a zippered jacker/vest pocket. After the items are in your pocket,  remove your drivers license (or other valid identification) from your wallet and place it in your pant pocket. Once yourI D is removed,  place your wallet in the same pocket in
the same zipper pocket. I use a zippered pocket because my jacket/vest must be removed at the airport screening checkpoint and sent through the x-ray machine.

If I am not wearing a jacket/vest I take my items out and place them in a 1-quart sized Ziplock bag and then place this bag inside my carry on baggage.

2) While in line approaching the x-ray and metal detector,remove my shoes and make your laptop accessible. If possible, fly with shoes that you can easily remove with no effort so you re not holding up the line while untying your shoes.

Sometimes there is a need to wear boots.  When wearing boots,   have them unlaced, with the laces tucked into the boots, so you can slip them off easily.

3) Just before approaching the x-ray ‘runway table’  pat yourself down to make sure you have not missed anything, such as keys or coins in you pockets.

4) When you get to the x-ray ‘runway table’ I take two bins, load them, and stack them until you get closer to the x-ray conveyour belt. This allows others to get their bins ready behind you, which speeds up the line for everyone.

5) The placement of you items in the x-ray scanner is an important part of the personal property security system.

The first bin through has should have your jacket/vest, shoes and ’3-1-1′ bag. By placing these items through first you can quickly grab up your shoes and jacket as soon as you get through the metal detector. While airport thieves will reach into shoes looking for a wallet, a watch or other valuables, they will not stop to pick up my jacket, unzip the pocket and search the pocket. There is no way to do that in a quick slight-of-hand manner. This means your items are rather safe from theft.

The second bin through the x-ray is your laptop. By placing your laptop second, behind your shoes/jacket and ahead of your bags, you create a barrier between the laptop and other items coming through the scanner. Your should try and pace yourself so you will come through the metal detector around the same time as the laptop comes through and rolls out of the conveyor belt.

The third and fourth items through are carry on bags, which is technically “1 bag + 1 personal item.” If you are traveling with a bag that is likely to be stopped inside the x-ray scanner and either get a few second looks through the x-ray monitor, or get pulled off for a hand-search, the first bag through is the one least likely to get stopped by the x-ray screener. The last bag in (or only bag if I am flying with 1 bag only) is the one most likely to be stopped. By placing the bags  last in line of items through the X-Ray scanner, you’ll be able to have your shoes on, your jacket on and your laptop in your  hand before the bags roll out.

You should ALWAYS  watch as your last bag enters the x-ray machine. You want to know personally that all your items are on their way to the “air side” of the x-ray machine.

6) As you approach the metal detector, boarding pass in hand, you should never take your eyes off the x-ray machine’s exit conveyour belt.  You don’t generally need to me make eye contact with the security screener, you should watch your items only. Because you have fully patted yourself down before you even enter the security line you know you are free of anything that will set off the metal detector and you can walk through quickly and recover your items.

7) If the “air side” area of the x-ray roll-off is crowded you should stack your bins, take your bags and walk to the end of the security screening area to carefully put yourself back together. By slowly and methodically putting everything back together you can ensure you leave nothing behind, and also leave no opportunity for a thief to steam your items. An additional benefit to taking your items and getting back together away from the conveyour belt you leave room for others to enter this area and claim their items without clogging up the post-security screening area.

8 ) Grab a newspaper, find a comfortable place to sit and wait for your flight to be called

If you get selected for “secondary screening” insist on being able to claim your items, or insist on a TSA screener collecting your items and placing them in your line of sight. You have the right to do this. If this is refused, do not take your eyes off your personal property and ask for a supervisor immediately………which will almost always simply cause a screener to collect your personal property and place it in your line of sight.

By using a system, being calm, and knowing exactly what you can and cannot bring through security you’ll have no problems getting to your gate quickly.

If you are unsure of what you can and cannot bring through security in the U.S. visit www.tsa.gov The allowed/not allowed lists on the TSA web site are now generally common throughout the airport security check points in many countries.

Happy Flying!

3/11/2008 – Baggage Locks : Keys vs Combination

All travelers worry about having items stolen from their bags while traveling. Having items stolen from checked baggage is just as frustrating as having items stolen from your carry on bags.

When I travel I keep locks on all my bags, even when only flying with carry-on baggage. Each zipper can be secured, especially when in certain situations, and if I am taking a nap, locks are needed for my PacSafe Anti-Theft Protector.

When you choose your locks, even working within the requirements of a TSA Sentry Approved Lock, not all locks are created equal. Yes, some locks are stronger than others, but that is not what I am addressing. What I am addressing is the security and practicality of using a combination lock instead of a key lock.

Key locks are prone to two significant security concerns.

The first security concern with key locks is key locks are somewhat easily accessible to professional thieves. Most skilled thieves do not need to pick a lock, or even cut a lock. If thieves are not picking or cutting a lock, how are they opening your lock? With a key-ring full of keys.

Open a package of most baggage locks; you’ll get two or three locks with only two sets of keys. This is because one key opens all three locks. Keys for many commercial locks are not unique; they will open thousands of locks. A skilled airport, or train station, their can quickly size up the lock on your bag and know which series of potential keys will open the lock.

The second security concern with using key locks is the potential for losing the keys to your lock. Should you lose your keys in transit, you’ll be unable to quickly and easily access your bags when you need to. Additionally, should you break a key off in your lock (and yes, I have heard of this happening more often than you might think) your lock will need to cut off. While getting a lock cut off isn’t so hard, it is not that easy when you’re standing in the airport, at the gate, awaiting an international flight to board and your boarding pass and passport are in your bag…………

Combination locks offer more security and considerably more peace-of-mind. A combination is only known to you and those you’ve told. Given that thieves cannot easily walk through an airport with a lock cutter, and the sound of a battery powered Dremel Tool sawing your lock off next to your head will wake you up, they’ll tend to move on to an easier target.

In addition to slightly more security with the use of combination locks, you cannot lose the combination to your locks. Combination baggage locks tend allow the user to set their own combination. All of my locks have the same combination, this way no matter what lock I snatch out of my drawer the combination is always the same.

Yes, TSA Approved Sentry Locks can all be opened with a set of keys that should only be available to TSA baggage screeners. Yes, these keys are available to those who are not TSA screeners. This does defeat the purpose of securing your bag, however a lock is an effective deterrent. A combination lock is a more effective deterrent.

If a professional thief really wants the contents of your bag, they may be hard to defeat………so ALWAYS try and reduce your chances of becoming a target and be aware of your surroundings.

Happy Flying!

7/10/2008 – Airport TSA Security Screener Busted For One-Man Theft Ring

What happens when those charged with protecting the flying public become those stealing from the flying public? This has come up time-and-time again.

Nearly 300 Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Transportation Screening Officers (TSO) have been discharged and arrested in the past, however a screener at Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) went further than the rest.

This week Pythias Brown, a six year veteran of the TSA, was charged with dozens of counts of theft from passengers at EWR, and faces up to 10 years in Federal Prison according to Assistant US Attorney Jenny Kramer.

What ultimately caused Brown to be caught was this theft of a camera, from an HBO crew, valued at US$47,900. What does one do with a US$47,900 camera? They place it on eBay, where someone looking for the stolen camera found it.

A camera Brown had allegedly stolen from CNN was also listed on eBay at the same time Brown had the HBO camera listed on eBay.

According to lead investigator Special Agent Thomas Adams, of the US Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General, 66 camera, 12 GPS units, 11 MP3 players, 31 laptops, 8 camera lenses, 2 DVD players, 6 video cameras, 13 pieces of jewelry and 17 electronic video games were found in Browns house when it was raided last week.

When confronted with the evidence Brown confessed to the crimes. He has been placed on administrative leave from the TSA and will be terminated shortly.

I will say what I have always said; the vast majority of TSA agents do a good job. These agents do what they can to protect the flying public, and with approximately 43,000 TSOs working throughout the TSA, the number of criminal TSA TSOs is a small percentage. However there needs to be more oversight of screeners.

How does a TSA screener leave work with a large movie production camera? How does a screener leave work with 66 camera and 31 laptops with no one noticing? What else did this TSA TSO steal from passengers over the past few years? Check out his eBay feedback here: http://EWRTSOEBay.notlong.com

I am happy that HBO and CNN have received their equipment back. I am glad the US DHS stopped this one-man theft ring. Hopefully this will lead to the TSA creating a new system to check TSOs and deter future thefts from the flying public.

Happy Flying!

12/08/2008 – Baggage Identification With Duct Tape : A Simple Solution

Over the past two years I have received countless e-mails asking me various solutions for labeling baggage so it is easily identifiable. I have written on the topic many times, each time detailing various ways. These topics range from how I colour code my bags to be easily spotted, to making sure my name and contact info is clearly found inside and outside of the bags.

Overall the quick and easy visual identification of my bags is carried out by the simple use of brightly coloured duct tape.

Duct tape, as everyone knows, has thousands of uses. Duct tape is used to fix heating ducts (its original purpose) to NASA’s use of duct tape to keep astronauts alive on Apollo 13 (it was used to help modify the carbon dioxide filters….and again on Apollo 17 to repair a damaged fender on a lunar rover on the moon).

If duct tape can keep astronauts alive why overlook it as a simple solution to baggage identification? I generally use one colour tape on my bags so I can quickly spot my bags and to keep them all uniform. The colour I have chosen is “Flamingo Pink.”

Duct tape will adhere to almost any surface and remain in place until removed, which makes it ideal for bags that will go from hot on the ramp to frozen in the baggage hold, to pouring rain waiting for your rental car.

My bags get wrapped with 1.88in (4.77cm) tape on the top and side handles, then additional tape on the front, back and remaining untaped side. By placing florescent coloured tape on all four sides of my bag not only can I identify my bag quickly, but also airport and baggage thieves are deterred from approaching my bag.

As I have also discussed many times in the past airport thieves want an easy target and a piece of luggage wrapped clearly in multiple places in extremely bright (and in some cases bordering on obnoxious) tape is not a bag they want to try and blend into the crowd with.

While I also use coloured electrical tape and gaffers tape on my equipment and personal items, my bags are primarily taped in duct tape. In the United States the easiest tape to find (in my experience) is Duck brand duct tape, however for ease of purchase when buying ‘matching’ duct tape, vinyl tape, electrical tape and gaffers tape I have not found any place that equals the quality and selection offered by TapeBrothers.com

Below is a photo of three rolls of duct tape I have on my shelf for labeling various pieces of travel gear. These three rolls of ‘Duck Tape’ are coloured Blaze Orange, Island Lime and Funky Flamingo (which is on my bags).

Happy Flying!

–Click Image To Enlarge–

29/07/2008 – Are Thieves Using Self Check-in Kiosks?

In the past week Canadian low cost airline WestJet stopped allowing passengers to check-in with their credit cards as the self check-in kiosks. WestJet is not trying to be difficult, they are not trying to force you to wait in line for an agent, what WestJet is doing is trying to protect their passengers from potentially being victims of credit card fraud.

Recently both MasterCard and Visa in Canada began investigating a potential security breach of airline self check-in kiosks at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport (YYZ). While neither MasterCard nor Visa will comment on how credit card information may have been stolen via the Kiosks software, it is suspected that savvy thieves have found a way to collect and store the data, then retrieve the stolen data through the network that connects the kiosks directly to the airlines.

While the incidents bring investigated are currently isolated to YYZ, it does not mean that is not being employed elsewhere in a way that is not yet detected. It also does not mean that thieves are not working to employ this technology elsewhere to collect as much credit card data as possible.

An odd twist in this potential security breach is that in theory an airline check-in kiosk should only be reading your credit card for your name to match it to your reservation. When you check-in, the kiosk asks you to swipe your card and type in your destination airport. This information combined is used to eliminate the potential of confusing passengers with the same name. When you check in, you do not need to use the same credit card you purchased the ticket with. Any valid credit card with your name can be used to check-in.

Since the current software that drives the self check-in kiosks should read no vital credit card information passengers should be protected from credit card theft. Clearly in some cases this is not what is happening and the hacked machines, which are produced by IBM Canada and use software created by both ARINC of Annapolis, Maryland (USA) and SITA or Geneva, Switzerland, are not only reading vital data, but more importantly, the machines are storing it somewhere within the machines’ systems.

So are thieves hacking the software in a small number of the 70,000+ self-service check-in kiosks at North American airports? Not exactly.

While companies such as Kinetics, which creates the software used in approximately 75% of the self check-in kiosks in the United States, will not discuss the specific details of how the machines work, it is known that a self service check-in reads your information off the magnetic strip on the back. The software reads all the information in that magnetic strip, and then it only takes the data it needs. One the system has the date it need it should purge the rest of the data from the system……. but only if the software being used it programmed to purge this information.

How can you avoid having your credit card information from a potentially unsecured self check-in kiosk?

When you check in you can use your reservation number or your passport. Some airlines allow you to check-in using your airline frequent flyer card. When using an airline frequent flyer card you must usually use the membership card of the airline you are traveling on and not those of affiliate or partner airlines (with limited exceptions). Personally, I find it easy enough to have my reservations number with me; it is stored in my Blackberry. I type it in; take my boarding pass and head to security.

Not all airport thieves are watching you and waiting to steal your items. Some are far away sitting a computer waiting to take what they want undetectable to unsuspecting passengers.

Happy Flying!

2/06/2008 – Flying With Fish On Good Morning America : The Video Clip!

I received countless e-mails from people asking if there was a video clip of my appearance on Good Morning America two week ago. Since the segment aired on the 20th of May I had requested a copy of my segment….. and the DVD arrived in the mail today.

With the help of Scott Sheppard, host of Inside Digital Photo (www.insidedigitalphoto.com), who interviewed me a month ago on his show, the segment was edited down to my portion, and uploaded to YouTube……THANK YOU SCOTT!

For you statistics people out there, the Nielsen Audience for the segment was around 4.7 million viewers; the calculated ad equivalency was US$450,000, with a calculated publicity value of US$1,350,000. I’m not sure what any of this means, as it didn’t seem to bring in US$1.35mil as all my following flights (even the long-haul flights over the Pacific) were all in economy class……but hey, it’s good to know this stuff just in case :0)

Without further delay…….Flying With Fish on ABC News’ Good Morning America

Happy Flying!