women going thru security

trishasaffron

Been travelling loads over the years. Occasionally pulled in for extra security screening but not too often.

Last few trips I make the machine beeps every time. I tell them its probably my underwire bra. But they ignore me - first they ask me to take off my watch and walk through, then my shoes (even if only flip flops) and walk through - lots of people waiting by this time - and then finally they put the wand over me and lo and behold its beep beep around the bra area!


Do I have to change my style of lingerie (been wearing underwire style for 30 years) or is there some way of tipping the security staff off? Am I the only one?

TheAnswer

trishasaffron wrote: »

Do I have to change my lingerie (been wearing them for 30 years)

Probably is about time you changed them alright.

Miaireland

I seem to set of the machine no matter what I wear. Last time I travelled I wore a skirt with a drawstring waist, a black t-shirt. A wirless sports bra with no metal clasp and normal underwear. Removed my shoes and all jewellery before going through security. I have no fillings or any kind of metal plate inserted in my knees etc and still set off the machine.

Even the person who frisk me down commented that when she passed the wand over me that I did not set it off.

jester77

You could put the bra through the scanner along with your other stuff if you don't want it to beep But the best option is to go through the full body scanner machine, it will just show up yellow in the scan and you won't need to keep going back in and out ruling out different things each time!

flikflak

Sometimes it will be completely random - the machines will just beep for no other reason than that.

If it has been idle for a few mins, it hasnt detected anything in a while - a number of random reasons.

robinph

They change the sensitivity of the machines and they go off at random. Surprised they didn't go over you with the wand sooner rather than send you walking back and forth.

mariebeth

To be honest, while it's frustrating, I'd personally be glad that they are being so thorough!

dudara

In fairness, you can't expect them to just believe you when you say that it's your underwire. They have to verify for themselves.

Apanachi

trishasaffron wrote: »

Do I have to change my style of lingerie (been wearing underwire style for 30 years)

Simple solution - just buy one non-under-wire bra for traveling, I normally always wear boots but they always beep when I go through security so I simply wear other shoes for traveling and put my boots in the luggage - no more beeping...

super_sweeney

i was working recently in the states in a factory and every day for data protection reasons we had to go through a number of security gates.

we noticed that if we placed our laptops or if someone else was standing close to them they would go off.

so we moved our laptops further away and made sure no one was standing close and it did make a difference on when they went off. but in an airport with xray machines and so many people and phones everywhere i think the electromagnetic fields effects the machines and then with us walking through the machines are so effected that they would nearly detect an ant walking through.

just what i noticed and the security guys from the factory.

p.s. yeah i know wierd all these secuirty risk and we were allowed to bring our laptops in, which they never checked to see if we had made notes or drawings of the stuff they had in there hahaha