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2014-03-18 - 7:45 a.m. Whew. I'm back. Yesterday went on forever. Allegedly AA decided to grant me TSA Precheck but it wasn't running in either Madrid or Miami, and clearing security was a huge hassle in both places. At MIA they said that people over 75 could keep their boots on. That's nice, honey. You're going to find out sooner than you think that most people's hips and knees don't wait until they're 75 for at least one of those four points of weakness to start making trouble. A little common sense, please! At MAD it was just confusing, since precheck people aren't supposed to take out computers and so I didn't take out mine and thus they had to send me back to run through my computer bag again. They weren't mad or anything, and they let me back in at the head of the security line, so it wasn't a huge waste of time, but I was a little surprised that they didn't just send back the questionable bag or computer themselves instead of having me stroll back and forth between airside and landside. No biggie, I guess. But they also had to tell everyone to take off their shoes, since Europeans usually don't bother. It all took a lot more time than you might, especially since the airport is huge and its far terminal four widely separated from the rest. People who arrived on connecting flights had a much bigger hassle than I did. Instead of being questioned for 15 minutes by some gate agent playing secret agent, they were all sent back to a separate line across from the boarding gate to answer some silly questions. What does that prove? And everyone of them said the same thing. "But I've already cleared security!" I know, honey. You landed here in an airplane, and you're strolling around airside, and now suddenly they want you to join another line to answer idiotic questions. I don't know how that does fuck-all for security. Yes, there's the thing in Malaysia, but it sounds like they need to focus on interrogating and backgrounding the crew, not the folks in the passenger seats, if you want to prevent weirdos from flying off and landing the plane in the Bermuda Triangle. That stuff isn't under passenger control. That's all on sloppy airline hiring, unless they've found out something new since I checked the news on Sunday. There was no first class security line at either MAD or MIA so my Priority AAccess was worth sweet fuck-all as well. They charge some people money for priority AAccess at AA so I'm thinking they're either not going to make many sales or they're going to end up having a lot of complaints filed against them for bogus offers.
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