with the barefoot wait that now is over 30min on lax or other major places. that is the same as losing your flight on the majority of cases.
and sorry if you cannot understand why countering reports of the exception with the rule is not helpful. thats how you get things like whitelivesmatter.
I did not wait anywhere near 30 minutes at LAX when I opted out there a couple weeks ago!
If you can cite some evidence that your impression is the rule, that might be helpful. My own experience, having opted out and gotten the pat-down every time I've flown since the new scanners were introduced, is that the process has not really changed at all over the years, and opting out has never come close to causing a missed flight.
Look no further for evidence of the hilarious security theater of the TSA than paying them a yearly fee and checking a box on a piece of paper a random employee in the back of the sad empty local Staples store that says "I'm not a terrorist I swear". And suddenly you dont have to take off your shoes or be body scanned and literally none of it matters...
That and the fact that they fail their internal testing regularly.
The TSA is as effective at keeping weapons out of secure airport areas as the tech industry is effective at keeping the CEO from clicking a phishing link.
