According to an article published earlier today by Bloomberg, it appears that our friends at the TSA have revised their screening policies as it relates to ‘patting down’ passengers at security check points.

Citing a 2015 study concluding that more and more weapons are making it past screening procedures, the TSA has notified its officers to be more thorough when patting down passengers.    Up until now, the TSA had 5 different approaches when it came to physical contact or screening of  a passenger.   With the new policy, that list of 5 has been narrowed to 1, and that ‘1’ is more comprehensive than the previous 5.

A spokesman for the TSA stated that passenger will ‘notice that the new pat-down is more involved’.   The TSA also said that this will apply to airline crew.    The TSA randomly screens a small number of ‘known crew’ passing through ‘crew security’, but that small percentage of crew being screened will be subject to the same new scrutiny as a passengers.

According to the article, the new strategy has been quietly rolled out in smaller airports over the past 2 weeks, and is now being rolled out to airports nationwide.  No mention was made if this would affect ‘Pre Check’ or similar expedited security programs.

Turn and Cough……