One minute, a security screener was pulling Jason Cumberland aside at Denver International Airport to “wand” him with a portable metal detector. The next, his laptop computer lay in pieces on the x-ray machine.
“I opened my laptop and three or four keys fell onto the ground,” remembers the Denver telecommunications consultant. “The plastic joining the screen to the base of the unit was cracked, and the wires connecting the screen were all exposed.”
A colleague traveling with Cumberland says he saw the screener drop the PC. But after filling out a claim form and following up with several dozen phone calls, he’s received neither an apology nor compensation for the notebook computer, which he says was completely destroyed.
Earlier this year, when the federal government began overseeing the screening of airline passengers, responsibility for carry-on items damaged by screeners shifted from the airlines to the new Transportation Security Administration (TSA), according to Bill Mosley, a spokesman for the Department of Transportation.
Now, grievances against security personnel who break sensitive technology during the screening process are sent to a government claims office – one that, by some accounts and its own admission, can be slow to respond.
Robert Greenberg, a systems analyst from Honolulu, had an experience almost identical to Cumberland’s. “While being body searched, I watched my $2,500 laptop teeter on the top of someone else’s suitcase on the x-ray machine belt,” he remembers. “My calm repeated pleas to the screener were ignored until I screamed in horror as I watched my laptop smash to the floor. At that point I was treated as a hell-bent terrorist and surrounded by security. When finally released I had the honor of picking up the pieces from the floor and scurrying to catch my flight.”
Greenberg says he was also asked to fill out a claims form, but by the time the paperwork arrived in the mail he had already fixed the laptop through an extended warranty.
Since TSA began supervising airport security in February, it’s received 192 claims for damaged laptops. Only two have been resolved.
Heather Rosenker, a spokeswoman for the federal agency, says the TSA is working to handle current claims – it’s opened a toll-free consumer hotline at (866) 289-9673, for example – and it trying to prevent future accidents by training new federal screeners how to handle sensitive technology. But Rosenker concedes that accidents do happen. “Screeners accidentally grab a computer too quickly, making it slide off the conveyor belt, or bump it to the ground with their elbows,” she says.
In a letter sent to travelers who file a complaint, TSA acknowledges that the claims process may take time. “TSA will try to resolve your claim as quickly as possible, but it may need time to make a further investigation of the facts,” the letter, signed by claims officer Gregg Golden, says. It suggests that claims may take up to six months to address, after which a traveler may want to “bring your claim to court.”
For business travelers, that’s such a long wait that they often don’t bother. Or they’re reluctant to file a grievance because they doubt the outcome will be favorable. Consider what happened to Ira Miller, a journalist based in San Francisco. Flying out of Oakland International Airport recently, he was ushered into a line to get a once-over with a portable magnetometer.
“I tried to keep an eye on my computer,” he recalls. “When I finally got it back, I started sliding it into my case, and another so-called security person – and I use the phrase ’so-called’ because I don’t feel these people do much for my security – handed my the antenna from my wireless modem. Said it was on the floor. Turned out it was not pulled or, or did not fall out, but was broken off, rending it not useable.”
Miller says it was pointless to argue the case or file a claim, because the security screeners denied responsibility.
Indeed, you may be more likely to get another passenger to pay for your damaged laptop than the government, to hear frequent fliers Bill Quinn talk about it. On his way through security at Ontario International Airport in Southern California, Quinn, who works for a San Francisco lobbying group, got his two-month old notebook tangled on another passenger.
“I showed him what was left of my computer,” he says. “He turned out to be an incredibly honest person. While my insurance paid the bulk of the cost of replacement, he paid the deductible.”
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I was traveling from Miami to NYC and in the airport the security guard decided to check my laptop on this new xray thing. I thought nothing of it, and when I got to my hotel, my computer read on the screen that no operatig system was found. All my files, pictures, and important documents gone and all the TSA told me was to fill out a form and they will reemburse me. Hopefully they will.