Airport protest fails to get off the ground

Associated Press

CHICAGO

The big Opt-Out looked like a big bust Wednesday as Thanksgiving travelers around the country patiently submitted to full-body scans and pat-down searches rather than create havoc on one of the busiest flying days of the year.

In fact, in some parts of the U.S., bad weather was shaping up as a bigger threat to travelers’ hopes of getting to their destinations on time.

For days, activists had waged a loosely organized campaign on the Internet to encourage airline passengers to refuse full-body scans and insist on a pat-down in what was dubbed National Opt-Out Day. But as of Wednesday evening, the cascading delays and monumental lines that many feared would result had not materialized.

“It was a day at the beach, a box of chocolates,” said Greg Hancock, 61, who breezed through security at the Phoenix airport on the way to a vacation in California. He was sent through a body scanner after a golf-ball marker set off the metal detector.

His wife, Marti Hancock, 58, said that ever since she was in the air Sept. 11, 2001, and feared there was a bomb on her plane, she has been fully supportive of stringent security: “If that’s what you have to do to keep us safe, that’s what you have to do.”

The Transportation Security Administration said few people seemed to be opting out. Some protesters did show up, including one man seen walking around the Salt Lake City airport in a skimpy, Speedo-style bathing suit, and others carrying signs denouncing the TSA’s screening methods as unnecessarily intrusive and embarrassing.

By most accounts, though, the lines moved smoothly, and there was no more or less congestion at major U.S. airports than in previous years on the day before Thanksgiving.

“I would go so far as to say that National Opt-Out Day was a big bust,” said Genevieve Shaw Brown, a spokeswoman for the travel company Travelocity, which had staff at 12 of the nation’s largest airports watching for problems.

Protest organizers — some of whom had no plans themselves to fly Wednesday — were not prepared to declare the event a flop, saying the publicity alone cranked up pressure on the White House and the TSA to review their security measures.