JFK's Terminal 4 baggage checks

Posted by TheYank at 8/21/2009 10:54 AM EDT

This may be too narrow a topic for this blog, but I thought I'd put it out there anyway.

If you fly Aer Lingus from Kennedy Airport you have to go through the bag security process at Terminal 4. Now I have no problem with the team from Homeland Security scanning all the bags. However, the way the process works makes me uneasy.

After you check-in with Aer Lingus you have to haul your bags down to the security check. You're then told to "just leave them there" by the Homeland Security guy (I'm sure there are women working there too!). Most people then just walk away.

I don't.

I've gone through this a dozen times or so and each time I walk about ten feet, turn around and watch. It's amazing how often the security guy walks far enough away from the luggage so that it's out of his sight. This looks like a big security hole to me.

Okay, maybe there's only a small risk that a terrorist could make use of this situation, but it seems to me that an attentive criminal could easily steal a bag left there. All he'd need to do is ensure that the person leaving the bag has left and wait for that moment when the security guy has walked over to look at the other end of the scanning machine. No one else would bat an eye if he simply wheeled away one of the eight or so cases that are waiting there. And would anyone know the bag was missing until the plane arrived in Ireland? Maybe, but maybe not.

Is it just that I watch too many movies?

Now perhaps the whole place is watched by banks of cameras that I didn't see or perhaps I simply don't have enough trust in my fellow man. I don't know, but I think I'll keep spending those few minutes watching my bag until it is actually put up into the scanner and begins making its way through the more secure areas of the airport.