How We Do It: Going through an Airport

I remember where I was on 9/11 (or 20010911, as a programmer would write it)—I had pulled an all-nighter playing and scouting Vegas, and I was just settling into my cozy bed at the Budget Inn downtown, across from the Greyhound bus station. On the TV I saw the live footage of the smoking World Trade Center buildings, before the second tower was hit. In my hometown,

if you went to the cemetery on the hill and stood on the wall, you could see the tops of the Twin Towers on a clear day. Some of the victims killed that day were from my town.

On top of the lives lost that day, and the subsequent death toll from war, the terrorists won another major victory—they triggered the implementation of the Patriot Act and a wave of draconian “security” measures that will persist for decades to come. Interestingly, APs feel these changes perhaps moreso than any other law-abiding group of people.

Most Americans fly only occasionally, perhaps a few times per year. They don’t carry much cash. They don’t have cards in different names. They respect police. If a cop walks up to a civilian in the street and says, “What’s your Social Security number?”, I set the line on the percentage of civilians who would immediately answer at 70%. I set the line at 95% for compliance after the cop starts throwing in some legal bluffs and intimidation.

If you are carrying a lot of cash, cops will seize it if they find it. And they do try to find it. And my own crew has experienced instances of theft by authorities (Vegas cops and TSA agents have stolen chips). With a bit of luck, most APs won’t experience a cash confiscation, but your AP life is surely affected by the beefed up security and harassment at airports. Since travel is a necessity for most full-time APs, it is important to know how to get through airports safely and efficiently. Here’s how we do it.

#1: Never check a bag. It is a lot easier to switch flights or get bumped if you have no checked bags. You’ll get your boarding pass quicker, without ever having to wait in a line or deal with a person at the ticket counter. Your bag will never get lost. Your bag will never be searched and your stuff will not get stolen. I have checked a bag perhaps twice in the last 15 years, and in those cases the bag had NOTHING of value, just clothes, and those were not AP trips.

#2: Try to select the line that has only a metal detector, not the body scanner. The body scanner can see cash or other non-metallic things. Also, the body scanner takes a bit longer, so a line builds up, and you can end up separated from your stuff on the X-ray conveyor built. You’re still in line for the scanner, but your stuff is already through and then in a position to get stolen (and TSA agents have been known to steal chips). Worse, the scanner is often positioned so that your stuff on the X-ray belt is out of view while you are in the scanner.

#3: Make sure you are in compliance with all of the standard procedures, so that you don’t trigger a full-bag or full-body search. Put the liquids in their little separate baggie, make sure you don’t have anything metallic in your pockets—keys, phone, change. Take off your belt. Take off your shoes. The sensitivity of metal detectors can vary, even at the same airport, so a metallic object that has gone through undetected in one instance will not necessarily go through every time undetected. I have had eyeglasses that went through clean one day, but not another day at the same airport (Chicago Midway).

#4: If you are going through the metal detector, don’t worry about cash (the following discussion assumes domestic travel). Some players claim that they have had cash set off the metal detector, but I have never had it happen to me (and I’ve carried over $100k through), and the stories are from players that are not very credible to me. Keep the cash in your socks, your back pockets, etc. If the cash is discovered in its multiple hiding places on your person, don’t get intimidated! It’s your money, there’s no reporting requirement when traveling domestically, and you can tell them that there are a lot of thieves running around airports!

#5: Since you may have cash in your back pocket, as you go through the metal detector, rotate your body so that the agent by the detector never sees your butt, so that you end up next to the conveyor belt facing back towards the detector and the conveyor-belt operator. On top of that, wear a dress shirt and leave it untucked, so that the tail of the shirt will hang down over your butt, hiding your back pockets further. In Eastern Europe, a scary militarily-clad female agent saw a bulge in my back pocket and wanted me to show her, even though I had gone through the metal detector and not set it off. Agents were on all sides of me, so I couldn’t hide my butt, and I didn’t have a long shirt tail. Lesson learned.

#6: Sometimes I have a bit of cash, maybe a five-pack, in my carry-on bag, but then I put it deep in the bag, so if the conveyor belt operator goes into my bag while I’m still going through the detector or body scanner, the agent will not have sufficient time to find and steal the cash.

#7: To protect your stuff, have teammates, especially those who do not have their own cash issues, go in front of you and behind you. The one in front of you is especially important, because your bags will probably go through before you can get through the body scanner, so it’s nice to have your teammate who is already through the scanner standing by the conveyor belt guarding your stuff and watching the agents.

#8: Because you may get separated from your stuff while you are getting scanned, you should arrange your stuff on the conveyor belt in a particular order. Put your shoes on the conveyor belt first. Whatever goes through first is most exposed to thieves who may be on the other side before you get through, but shoes are not very tempting to thieves. Also, when you do get through, the shoes will come out right away, so you can start putting them on while your other stuff is getting processed. I next put my bin with toiletries/liquids, my cap, and other safe items. Last, I put my laptop bag, which is empty except for power cords and other worthless items. In between, I put my main bag. Send it through fully zipped up. If it is open, you are at higher risk of search and theft.

#9: Chips. If you are carrying a big bag of casino chips, they usually show up as an impenetrable or indistinguishable blob on the screen of the X-ray operator. Because I don’t want to trigger a search of my whole bag, which is a time-waster with no upside, I do not put the chips in my main bag. I put the casino chips in the same type of Ziploc baggie as my liquids, and then put them in a bin. This way, the operator can see the chips, can feel them and shake them around, but doesn’t need to actually touch them. I actually double-Ziploc-bag them, so that chips don’t spill all over if one bag rips, and to give a bit of extra protection from an agent who wants to steal the chips. To open both bags will take him a bit of extra time, and in those few seconds you might make it through the scanner. And yes, there is a risk the TSA guy will steal the whole bag. That has happened. If an agent ever claims that chips are subject to reporting, he’s wrong. First of all, domestic travel has no reporting requirement. On top of that, chips are not a cash instrument. Chips are nothing more than a receipt saying that someone owes you money. If chips are a monetary instrument, then why won’t anyone pay a penny for a stash of purple chips from the Maxim? And I have some pre-Katrina Biloxi chips …

#10: Cash. If I have to go through the body scanner, I usually put some of the cash dispersed in various spots in my main bag, but not easily accessible from the top, but then carry most of the cash in a wad in my hand. When holding my hands over my head in the modern scanner, they often either do not care about or do not notice the wad in my hand. In many instances, the scanner operator (who is supposedly in a room somewhere) has not inquired about the object in my hand. I don’t think he can tell what it is, because sometimes they do ask to see what is in my hand, and I just show them that it’s cash (why wouldn’t I carry cash in the safest place—my hand!), with small bills on the outside and inside of the wad. I think that often the scanner operator is looking at the body, assuming your hands are in fact empty. This is actually an old prison trick, where the object of interest is in fact in the inmate’s hands while he’s getting patted down. It’s a victory for the terrorists that law-abiding American APs now commiserate with and learn from criminals.