Travel Wise | Airport body scanners: Questions and answers | Seattle Times Newspaper

The Transportation Security Administration's plan to install new full-body scanners at U.S. airport security checkpoints is raising lots of questions about privacy and health issues.

Add to those the potential for hassles and confusion, especially during the upcoming holidays, when record numbers of families will be flying.

TSA plans to have 450 scanners installed in 50 U.S. airports, both big and small, this year, and 500 more next year, performing what it calls advanced imaging technology. I tried to answer some frequently asked questions in my latest Travel Wise column for the Seattle Times. 

Travel | Four-star San Francisco on a two-star budget: Penny pinching without the pain | Seattle Times Newspaper

Travel | Four-star San Francisco on a two-star budget: Penny pinching without the pain | Seattle Times Newspaper

SAN FRANCISCO — Crystal chandeliers hanging from a glass dome ceiling evoke an era when kings, queens and heads of state dined in the Palace Hotel's Garden Court restaurant.

The tab for lunch can easily reach $40 a person, likely more for those who splurge on scallops or steak.

How was it then that two of us ate here for $19.09 each, including a 90-minute tour through hallways, rooms and bars decorated with marble and brass?

Four-star San Francisco on a two-star budget was my mission. The Palace's "Historic Lunch and Tour" special offered Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, part of an extended celebration of the hotel's 100th anniversary, was part of the plan.

World-class museums, oysters by the bay, ethnic neighborhoods. San Francisco has it all. A weekend escape will surely steal your heart, but it doesn't have to empty your wallet.

Affordable luxuries await those skilled in the art of penny-pinching without the pain. Read how to do it here. 

Travel | Full-body scanners arrive at Sea-Tac Airport | Seattle Times Newspaper

Travel | Full-body scanners arrive at Sea-Tac Airport | Seattle Times Newspaper

By Carol Pucci

Seattle Times travel writer

MIKE SIEGEL / THE SEATTLE TIMES

E.B. Rice, assistant federal screening director at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, demonstrates the new machine at a security checkpoint.

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Traveling through Seattle-Tacoma Airport soon? Be prepared to remove your wallet, take off your watch and belt, empty your pockets and stand with your hands over your head while an X-ray machine scans for anything hidden under your clothing.

Fourteen full-body scanners will be installed at Sea-Tac security checkpoints with some fully operational within the next week, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officials said Friday.

The machines, called "backscatter" devices, allow agents to see through clothes by scattering low-dose X-rays at a passenger's front and back. The X-rays produce a chalky, nude image that detects hidden metallic and nonmetallic items alike, such as plastic weapons and explosives.

San Francisco treat

Surprise find while in San Francisco last week. Dottie’s True Blue Cafe, an upscale diner in a downscale neighborhood. Dottie’s sits across the street from a parking garage in the Tenderloin District. Reviewers on Yelp and Urbanspoon. award it four stars for its eclectic breakfast menu.

Dottie's opens at 7:30 a.m., and from what we were led to believe, the lines start forming around 7 a.m. We got there around 7:15 on a Friday. No trouble getting a table for the first seating, but by 7:45 a.m., all 40 seats were taken and there was a longer line of people waiting on the sidewalk. 

It was hard to decide what to order, but we finally settled on a brick-sized slab of warm blueberry-whiskey coffee cake, then a split order of a prosciutto, tomato and basil scramble. Coffee flowed as owner Kurt Abney worked the grill. With tax and tip, our bill was $14 each, not really cheap, but very filling, and very good. Not your average diner!

Love the counter stools with a view of the grill action. Most of the egg dishes are served with an herbed corn bread toast. Really delicious. The Tenderloin is mostly seedy rather than dangerous, so no worries about walking a few blocks out of the main downtown area to get here. Enjoy!

The Blame Game

Don't you love it when airlines who tout all the benefits of their cozy mileage partnerships, then end up blaming each other when things go wrong?

Months after Delta acquired Northwest and became Alaska Airlines' new mileage partner, the two still can't seem to get their act together.

I booked a mileage ticket a while back with Delta for an Alaska Airlines flight to Tucson. Imagine my surprise when I went to check in for the flight online, and was told that I had to check in at the airport. Web check-in would not be possible, Alaska said, because of an error on Delta's part in writing the ticket. When I phoned Delta, it blamed the problem on Alaska. No skin off either of their backs - I'm the one who has to wait in a line at the airport ticket counter instead of checking on online at home. The customer, in this and so many cases when it comes to the airlines, always seems to be stuck in the middle.

The kicker: The Delta agent "congratulated'' me for being a member of its elite frequent flier program. She was reading from a script of course, since, in this case, the benefits of elite status got me nowhere when it came to solving whatever the problem was.

Around a Lazy River

I don't know what took me so long to get to Eugene, Oregon, but it's a great weekend getaway destination, and easy to get to from Seattle. Tom and I took Amtrak a few weeks ago, and explored by bike along the Willamette riverpath. Best part: Our B&B supplied the bikes.

      
This is the River Walk Inn, a half-block from one of the entrances to the bike path. The path itself is level, smooth and scenic, with lots of parks, gardens and green space. We had fun exploring off the path as well as on. Read all about it in my story in today's Seattle Times. Click here to find out more.

Coming soon to an airport near you: Full-body scans, new pat-down procedures

If you haven't been confronted with new security checks at U.S. airports, you will be soon, especially if you're traveling around the holiday season.


Airports around the country, including Seattle's Sea-Tac international are being outfitted with full-body X-ray scanning machines federal authorities say will help identify terrorist threats, but other say pose concerns about privacy, health risks and longer waits in security lines.


The scans, which effectively allow agents to see through clothes by scattering low-dose X-rays at a passenger's front and back, produce a blurry nude image that can be screened for nonmetallic items such as weapons and explosives hidden under clothes.

TSA is making the screening optional, but opting to go through a metal detector instead will require a physical pat-down that promises to be more thorough than those given in the past. 

TSA is introducing new physical search procedures at two airports – Boston Logan and Las Vegas McCarran International Airport – before implementing them nationwide. Known as "enhanced pat-downs," the procedure involves using the palm-first method for the entire body search. The TSA had previously had its officers use the backs of their hands when moving over a subject's more sensitive areas. 

The pat-downs have raised the ire of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in Massachusetts which questions the effectiveness of screening techniques when weighed against what it feels are increasing threats to privacy.

Meanwhile, the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington D.C. has filed a suit to stop the use of body scans, charging they are the equivalent of a digital strip-search.

Read more about the controversy in this Seattle Times article.