While the TSA doesn't count grumbles as fliers remove their shoes or leave behind oversized shampoo bottles, the number of complaints received by phone or e-mail has decreased, according to TSA data. The numbers this year are lower than in recent years past: 1,294 complaints total in March, the most recent month for which data are available. That's down from a peak of 4,027 in May 2004, the highest number since the TSA began to track and release complaint data eight years ago.
I find that pretty interesting: the TSA took over airport security two years before they decided to take notice of complaints.
Myself, I think it's a necessary evil... but they really SHOULD find ways to handle their mission better. I know that I have vowed to avoid all air travel that I can (this was before the bottom dropped out of my world financially) because that sort of travel is on a seemingly never-ending slope toward legalized torture.
I mean, already I believe that coach passengers have less personal space for their trip than captured African slaves had for their passage to America. The only things that make it less horrible than what the slaves experienced is that it only lasts a few hours, it's a marginally cleaner environment, and there are bathrooms available. But to put on top of that the annoyance of standing in line and having to jump through all the hoops of the TSA's REACTIONS to infamous terrorist tactics (all we need is for some guy to get caught with a load of C4 in his colon... then we'll all LITERALLY be screwed) is rubbing salt into an open wound.
There's got to be a better solution. Not traveling by air for vacations seems to be the only viable choice. For someone like me who LOVES to see the world, that truly hurts. No doubt, Bin Laden is looking down from his fun with his crowd of virgins, smirking at my annoyance. Guess he hasn't noticed how much difference it has made to HIS people...
