Posted on 12/01/2014 10:11:04 AM PST by jalisco555
Holiday travelers faced a literal nightmare on Sunday morning when the line for security checks at Midway Airport in Chicago was reportedly over a mile long.
KOMO reporter Denise Whitaker said that the line was 1.2 miles long. An airport spokespersonsaid that she wasn't surprised by the crowds.
“This happens sometimes,” Chicago Aviation Department rep. Karen Pride told the Chicago Sun-Times. “There was a period of time earlier this morning, between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m., that lines were long because that is when most people are traveling for the holiday period.”
Twitter users posted pictures of the hellish scene. The end of the line was literally outside of the airport.
(Excerpt) Read more at huffingtonpost.com ...
It’s as if the airlines and the gov really don’t want us to fly any more.
My wife and I traveled to Israel in June. While there, we visited a winery and they gave each of us nice corkscrews with their logo. I threw them into my backpack and forgot about them. We flew out of Ben Gurion airport, the world’s most security conscious airport and they said nothing about the corkscrews, which I didn’t realize were still in my backpack. But the TSA at JFK confiscated them. I’m still furious.
What is puzzling is that there is that many more travelers than a normal Sunday morning. I mean, it’s not like the airlines can double the number of flights for this particular day.
So on a normal Sunday, the lines are “ONLY” 0.6 miles long? That would not be endured by travelers or the media.
Something else is wrong. Procedure or labor shortage?
I’ve never been to Midway airport but I understand the layout forces people into one line. But it sounds insane that the normal line is more than half a mile long.
Old enough here to remember when flying commercial airlines was a pleasure . . . *sigh.
I have and I have seen it go out the doors to the El stop. Luckily I have a pass to go through express. But even on a good day the line is insane, but it does move quickly, and I've only known a few people to miss flights. As someone mentioned above there is only one line into the gate area, but they do have a large number of lines when you get close.
Can anyone name me a more useless government agency?
I'm buying popcorn for the showdown looming in Pittsburgh.
We have a state of the art airport mall-- not the normal crap you see in most other airports with overpriced news stands, eating and watering holes and cheesy souvenir stands.
We have one of the nicest airport malls on the planet with a fully functioning drug store, post office, clothing shops and most anything you'd expect to find in any world class shopping mall. In addition, since Pennsylvania charges no sales tax on clothing, our clothing stores in the airport mall do a brisk business.
It was designed and built pre-911 and, sadly, many tenants have gone out of business with the TSA idiots severely limiting traffic and access. But now the airport is fighting back and it looks like TSA may be cracking open the door. On one hand, they are almost universally reviled. Airports like PIT which have well organized malls inside stand to make a lot more money if they just get the h3ll out of the way.
On the other, they see this as an opportunity to create even more opportunities for their flunkies to roam about and do random security screenings. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Lucky you. Before I had the misfortune of changing SWA flights there once, I considered LAX or JFK to be the worst airports in the USA and maybe even the world.
MDW's only redeeming virtue is that the gates are packed so close together that you can generally make a 30 minute connection unless you are so stupid as to expect to buy something to eat. Then, you get to choose between McDonald's quality with long, long lines or buy some $8 two day old prepackaged sandwich at some cheesy kiosk with short lines.
If you MUST eat, buy the overpriced snack pack on the airline. At least it is fresh.
If it was a "literal" nightmare, wouldn't all those people be asleep and having a scary dream?
“Old enough here to remember when flying commercial airlines was a pleasure . . . *sigh.”
Economy commercial flight is just the cheapest way to go A to B with the maximum discomfort passengers are willing to accept.
Most people don’t care about being uncomfortable for a flight if it saves them $100+ bucks that day. That’s simply the market for most people flying today.
If you want a pleasurable flight and don’t care about savings, you can pay for a big seat and priority boarding
There are two linguistic principles at work here. The first is "Usage determines meaning". The second is "Language always changes". So literally is now a synonym for figuratively. /pedantic
I always look at the rules for all the airports through which I will be traveling. Last August I bought a couple of bottles of Perrier-Jouët in a duty free shop in Heathrow and carried them on the plane. Once I got to Newark, I put the bottles in my checked baggage before I rechecked them for the domestic legs of my trip home.
We have to “ thank” gwb for this krap. Alas. And we stopped flying. The airline promised to call us if and when we can fly again without risk of being groped like sheep being sent to market. So far the Phone has remained silent and we’ve remained with both feet firmly set on the ground. Alas. Welcome to Amerika.
I was flying home from a job interview in Raleigh, NC when I was pulled off the line to be patted down, despite my being dressed in business attire and looking very unthreatening. The TSA guy kept patting my chest with a confused expression. Finally he said "I don't know what I'm feeling here. I need to take you into the room over there and have you strip down". I said "Those are my ribs!". He got an odd look on his face and told me to just go to my gate.
In addition to the groping, we had a little jar of blueberry preserves confiscated with all sorts of hysterics and public fanfare as if they’d just prevented the St Valentine’s Day massacre. And then of course there are the cattle lines. Anyone have any ideas of how to do some good with a few hundred thousand u use frequent layer miles?
Bwahahahahahaaaa. It’s the worst, absolutely the worst security check point in the country. What really gripes you too, is these sit around and chat security people that don’t give a rat’s on how long it takes to go through the lines.
Oops. If they were frequent layer miles (what a great commercial idea!) Id keep (and use) them. Ha! ——— Frequent flyer miles ———
probably also the reason that Greyhound bus ticket prices were sky high after Thanksgiving
The word used to be “veritable.”
This is literally idiocy.
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