Knees Set Off Airport Security

How one traveler learns – the hard way – to navigate TSA screening.

- Joanne Cleaver

GRR – that’s both the code for the airport in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and how I feel about it. The lines are long at 6:30 a.m. – and I’m stuck in one because the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) doesn’t open its Precheck line until 9 a.m. I paid $90 for five years of Precheck, but here I am, along with my two artificial knees – $140,000 worth of hardware confusing both the security scanner and the TSA staffer who can’t figure out what I’m telling her.

“You set off the machine,” she says. “Do you have change in your pockets?”

“I have neither pockets nor change,” I say, as my purse, laptop, shoes, jacket and briefcase pile up on the conveyer belt. “I have two replacement knees,” I say. She frowns.