TSA at Newark's Liberty Airport Are the Best, Regardless of Color

JANUARY 16, 2004
By GREGORY J. RUMMO

     DURING THE CHRISTMAS and New Year’s celebration, the terror alert was raised to orange. The Department of Homeland Security initially cited an increase in “chatter”—a word the intelligence community uses to loosely define communications it intercepts over a variety of conduits including Internet chat rooms—as the primary reason for the heightened security alert.

            But the cover story on the January 12 edition of USA Today broke the news that the US’s concerns were based in something more substantive than “chatter.” The newspaper reported for the first time since the 9/11 attacks, officials were able to obtain “specifics about how al-Qaeda was planning to use international flights for imminent attacks in the USA.”

            Fortunately, as in the past, nothing happened. There were rumors of a suspicious Middle Eastern passenger who failed to show up for a cancelled Air France flight as well as talk of nuclear scientists dispatched to New York City with Geiger counters to hunt for a “dirty bomb” on New Year’s Eve.

            Americans went on with their celebrations. The only thing that was dropped on Times Square was the lighted ball at the stroke of midnight ushering in 2004. If there ever was a real threat to Americans on American soil it had been thwarted by Homeland Security.

            Hopefully, heinous plans of blowing up planes over American interests will only remain as fodder for future episodes of “Threat Matrix,” or “24” and the real terrorists will never succeed.

            As a business traveler I am frequently passing through airports across the country. I almost always fly out of Newark Liberty Airport where the TSA has gotten security procedures down to an efficient and exact science. And it never seems to matter what the threat level is. Whether orange or yellow, they always do a professional job.

            At least that’s been my experience since the days immediately following 9/11 right up to a recent trip out west earlier this month.

            Two weeks ago on a Sunday afternoon, I flew out of Newark to Denver on United 333. The flight was scheduled to leave at 1:40 PM. When my secretary booked the limo to the airport, the driver insisted he pick up my colleague and me an hour earlier than I had requested due to the heightened terror alert. I reluctantly consented knowing I would end up sitting in the departure area of the gate idling away my time. (Actually, I used the time wisely, writing this column on my laptop).

            As it turned out, on the Friday before our trip, Homeland Security dropped the terror alert back to yellow.

            Here’s how my trip went:

            10:27 A.M.Seated comfortably in he back of the black Lincoln Town Car, we pull out of the driveway of our church in Paterson where the driver met us. The roads are practically empty.

            10:57 A.M.—We arrive at Newark airport. There are no car by car inspections and consequently no bottlenecks. We pull up in front of Terminal A in a mere 30 minutes. As my colleague wastes 4 minutes of our time puffing a last cigarette outside the terminal, I walk in and engage three heavily armed National Guardsmen standing near the security area.

            11:01 A.M.—The automated United Check-in stations are empty. It takes little more than a minute to print our boarding passes.

            11:03 A.M.—We line up at the two counters outside of the main security area where we are asked to show our photo IDs and boarding passes.

            11:04 A.M.—We move to the next line where security will now x-ray our bags. The laptop comes out of my briefcase and my shoes come off. I pass through the metal detector without setting off any alarms. Meanwhile, all of my belongings arrive at the end of the belt. No one asks to swipe my computer or my shoes for bomb residue.

            11:11 A.M.—We arrive at Gate 12, almost in time to catch the earlier flight to Denver, which is still parked at the gate but unfortunately the jetway has just been pulled away from the door so we are left to sit and wait (and in my case, to write) for an additional hour.

            It took a mere fourteen minutes to go from the limo to the departure lounge.

            If I listened to the reports on the nightly news about the security procedures in US airports, I’d probably never venture out my front door. But I have never had a bad experience traveling through Newark and I commend the TSA employees for their efficient and courteous handling of the millions of passengers that pass through the airport’s gates during what is a difficult and an often uncertain time in our nation’s history. n

Gregory J. Rummo is a syndicated columnist. Read all of his columns on his homepage, www.GregRummo.com. E-Mail Rummo at  GregoryJRummo@aol.com