In the past year, Yates said, he has seen security regulations get more consistent, and he's impressed with the TSA's ability to make passenger screening more thorough and efficient. At BWI, which the TSA has used as a national prototype for tightening security while keeping passengers moving, Yates said he notices a clear difference in the screeners compared with those at some other airports, where screeners still work for private contractors.
The way they address passengers as "sir" and "ma'am" makes the TSA screeners seem more professional, he said. He likes the way they'll ask, "Sir, may I look in your bag?" rather than the more curt "Is this your bag?"
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Security Update: How Washington area airports are working to meet federal security requirements
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Video: Passengers Prepare for Tighter Security
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Video: Reagan National on 9/11
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Graphic: New Security Checkpoints
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The TSA screeners at BWI seem to pay more attention to the X-ray machine screens, he said, and they no longer appear to be as random in whom they search. In Los Angeles, he said, there seems to be no rhyme or reason. He said he wishes the TSA would spend more time filtering out the vast majority of passengers who pose no threat from the relatively few who are truly suspicious.
"Granny Smith who's 85 years old and getting on an airplane -- I have a hard time believing she's going to try to get in the cockpit and hijack an airplane," Yates said of some of the passengers he's seen pulled aside for extra searches.
He said he often wonders whether those working for private contractors know what they're looking for or whether they are simply filling a quota of searching so many people or items per hour. Why else, he said, would he be pulled aside for an extra bag search one week but not the next, when he takes great pains to pack almost identically from week to week?
He said he wonders whether some screeners, like one who pulled him aside in Los Angeles a few months ago, are simply working by the numbers. The screener, he said, asked him to bring his laptop over to be swabbed for traces of explosives but never tested the soft-sided briefcase that Yates carried the computer in. If the computer was so suspicious, Yates said, why wouldn't the bag be scrutinized, too?
"If it doesn't appear to be a logical process," Yates said, "then you start to question its validity."
The Flight Attendant
Grinnan, the US Airways flight attendant, still greets passengers with a cheery "Welcome aboard."
Gregarious and energetic, she has been doing this for 15 years, trying to help passengers through the stresses of their traveling day.
But now, besides flashing the smile, she also looks each person in the eye.
Grinnan wants to know who is traveling in a small group or who avoids her gaze. She wants to see who is getting out of a seat or who is coming down the aisle. Like police officers who won't sit with their backs to a crowd, she makes sure the line for the back bathroom doesn't end up trapping her in the galley.
"To have fear put in your life," she said recently, "is not a good thing."
She works flights out of National and Dulles, one of the three airports where the 19 hijackers boarded planes Sept. 11.
"I just don't know what's out there," said Grinnan, who's 35 and lives in Centreville. "I still believe we're being tested by al Qaeda. I think they're trying to see the next vulnerability, if indeed there is one."
