SEATAC — Annette Lyons was surprised when she was once allowed to bring knitting needles on an airliner.
“If I chose to, I could hurt someone with those,” said Lyons as she rode a shuttle from Everett to the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on Thursday for a trip to Anchorage, Alaska.
Yet she’ll never forget the time her son was singled out for secondary security scanning — when he was 8.
The seeming inconsistency of allowing knitting needles on the plane while searching children and elderly ladies is one of many frustrations cited by travelers in a new Associated Press-Ipsos poll.
Only the Federal Emergency Management Agency, still suffering from its mishandling of Hurricane Katrina, ranks below the Transportation Security Administration among the least-liked federal agencies, according to the poll.
The TSA tied with the perennially unpopular tax collectors in a favorability ranking of a dozen executive branch agencies.
Still, the survey also found that 53 percent of air travelers think TSA does a “very” or “somewhat” good job.
On Thursday Paula Bauert of Granite Falls, riding Shuttle Express from Everett to Sea-Tac, was among them.
“I’m one of the few people who think things could be a lot worse than they are,” said Bauert, who was flying to Tucson, Ariz.
Reviews by travelers interviewed Thursday were mixed.
Lyons’ son, Alex Wilson, 15, of Arlington, had to wait once while a swab was taken of a cast on his arm. Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he was taken aside and searched when a buckle on his sandal set off the metal detector.
There should be more common sense used in the process, he said.
“I don’t think of an 8-year-old as being a huge security threat,” said Wilson, who was traveling with his mother on Thursday.
As the holiday rush was starting to kick in at Sea-Tac on Thursday, the most common complaint of travelers who have flown since Sept. 11 were friskings and strip searches.
Andrea Stueckle, 24, of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, got pulled aside once.
“The people on both sides of me were kind of freaking out, so they took us all as a lump,” she said. “I got frisked.”
The other travelers were showing impatience with the security process, she said.
“As soon as (the TSA staff) saw that I was calm, they said, ‘OK, you can go.’”
Donelle Odren, 45, of Spokane said she was strip searched shortly after Sept. 11. She still isn’t sure why. “That was very uncomfortable, actually,” she said.
Susan Houck, 37, of Lynnwood said she hasn’t had a problem, but several of her friends have been strip searched, she said. They’re bankers and they travel a lot, she said.
“I’ve just been one of the lucky ones,” she said.
In the AP-Ipsos poll, the inconvenience of security was the top complaint of air travelers, mentioned by 31 percent of those who had taken at least one trip in the past year. That figure rose to 40 percent for those who have taken five to 10 trips.
The TSA’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, also ranked at the bottom of an index of consumer satisfaction released this week, supplanting the IRS as the prime subject of grumbling in that survey. The authoritative American Customer Satisfaction Index questioned 10,000 people about their experiences with the federal government.
TSA officials say they understand the frustration, are working to minimize hassles and that they respond to every complaint. They say while it can be annoying, airport screening is essential because intelligence reports show aviation remains a top target for terrorists.
The TSA imposed a restriction on liquids in August 2006 after a plot surfaced to blow up U.S. airliners with liquid explosives.
Several travelers at Sea-Tac said following the rules is the key.
“I’ve got the routine down, just slough everything and go,” Steuckle said. She wears shoes that slip on and off, she said.
Suzanne Darrow, 38, of Everett, who travels frequently, said by the time she gets to the front of the line, she’s ready to zip through.
“I’m just a preparation kind of gal,” she said.
Travelers who fumble with their water bottles and junk while the line grows cause as many backups as the security checks themselves, some said.
Lyons, 42, said she was behind a woman once “and she’s fiddling in her purse for her boarding pass, and she’s fiddling to find her passport. That part is the most frustrating; it’s other people.”
Several travelers said they understand the difficulty of the screeners’ jobs and take the inconvenience in stride.
“I’m in the Navy and I’ve worked security a few times so I don’t really have a problem with them,” said Chris Patterson, 24, of Everett.
Kay Nunez, 67, arriving Thursday to visit her daughter in Kingston, said the security screening lines went quickly on her flights to Sea-Tac.
“They’re really doing a better job,” she said.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Reporter Bill Sheets: 425-339-3439 or sheets@heraldnet.com.
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