Opinion > October 25, 2007

By Lauren Wright | Old Gold & Black columnist

If you flew home for fall break this weekend, you probably don’t need to hear another story about an airline experience gone wrong.

But this is relevant, I promise you, because I now fully understand why Nobel Prize winner Al Gore uses all those “carbon credits” when he’s jetting around and saving the world.

No matter what your political leaning is, you have to admit that killing a few trees and blasting a few more holes in the ozone is better than taking your own life in the airport security line at Charlotte, which is what I almost did on Thursday morning.

When you actually get to the airport, you assume (inaccurately), every time, that your experience can’t get any worse than the last time you traveled somewhere. That’s before you hit the security checkpoint.

Then you realize that the line is so long that you can vaguely recognize a few ancestors up at the front that have been waiting for decades to get a pat-down.

You (hopefully) make it past the ID check, where the greenest of the elite security team are stationed, standing proud with that red sharpie and those intimidating shoulder pads.

This is the first step gone wrong on the part of the Homeland Security Administration and TSA: if you are going to convert a group of ex-McDonalds workers into airport security guards (which would seem to be a pretty easy task), at least put your A-team at the front of the line so they can recognize a license that’s stained with nitromethane.

But, everyone gets through and begins the battle for those dismal gray trays, fearing the sniper in the corner that will fire if your laptop isn’t left uncovered. You take 10 minutes to remove your sneakers, five of which you spend thinking about how many types of diseases you are contracting from the airport floor, and the other five minutes wondering why all the tourists get to slide by in their prophet sandles.

Then you go through the tunnel of doom, four or five times, depending on what kind of mood the Transportation Security Administration man standing at the entrance is in, and you once again wonder why that guy who is wearing full-body hunting gear and cradling a rifle is getting Starbucks while an 11-year-old boy, holding his teddy bear, is getting a full physical via magic security wand.

This month, the TSA ran 70 bomb-screening tests in Los Angeles, 75 in Chicago and 145 in San Francisco. At Chicago’s O’Hare Airport the screeners missed 60 percent of the bombs in briefcases and carry-on bags and 75 percent of weapons and explosives that were concealed under clothing or in carry-on belongings.

This is scary stuff. Not even scary in the sense that I could easily sneak an AK-47 on the plane while my toothpaste is confiscated, but because it is threatening the inherently American value of efficiency and speed, especially in the realm of travel. This is predominately embarrassing.

Don’t worry though. I wasn’t home free after that. I sat in 21D. For those of you who don’t know what that means on the standard Boeing 737 that United Airlines flies from Charlotte to San Diego, all you need to know is that it is a fatal seat assignment. It is an aisle seat no more than 5 inches from the one bathroom on the plane.

So, if you want to memorize the bowel movements of 300 travellers distended with airport food for five hours sit in 21D. Or, if you don’t want to, heavily medicate yourself with anything in your immediate reach, or just end it all with the hatchet the guy next to you managed to sneak past the TSA.

So here’s to you Dr., I mean, Mr. Gore (scientist by default), you let it rip on that Gulfstream V, because I think we can all admit that when it comes to avoiding commercial airlines: if you could, you would.

Lauren Wright is a sophomore from Rancho Sante Fe, Calif.