Airport chaos fear as scanner revolt grows

Travellers vowing to boycott controversial see-through airport scanners threatened chaos on the busiest US air travel day.

Americans have voiced outrage over the new, personally invasive security searches and threatened airport protests that could snarl up the system today – the peak of Thanksgiving holiday travel (Thanksgiving falls tomorrow).

Body scans take as little as 10 seconds, but people who refuse to undergo the scan must submit to a full pat-down, which takes much longer. That could cause a cascade of delays at dozens of major airports, including those in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta.

The Obama Administration and security chiefs acknowledged public anger but emphasised the need to keep travellers safe from potential terror attacks in the sky.

The uproar is over new procedures implemented by the Transportation Security Administration, which was created after the September 11 2001 terror attacks and has toughened airline security significantly since.

The new checks include body-scanning devices at about 70 US airports that produce virtually nude, although unrecognisable, images of travellers.

Those who refuse the scan are allowed to undergo pat-down body searches, but those can include the touching of genitals through clothing.

Cable television outlets, internet sites and blogs have been dominated by stories about the procedures, some highlighting the indignities they have caused for travellers.

A bladder cancer patient from Michigan who wears a catheter bag said a security agent at a Detroit airport patted him down so roughly, the bag spilled urine on his clothing.

Tom Sawyer, a 61-year-old retired special education teacher, said the experience left him in tears before he caught a flight to Orlando, Florida.

“I was absolutely humiliated. I couldn’t even speak,” he said.

Transportation Security Administration chief John Pistole said he was concerned about people such as Mr Sawyer who have had uncomfortable experiences with agents performing the body searches.

Mr Pistole also said he understood public anger about privacy but stressed that a relatively small proportion of the 34 million people who had flown since the new procedures came in had body pat-downs.