I was at McGhee-Tyson in late 2001, after returning home for Thanksgiving, flying back to Upstate NY where I lived at the time.
We were all in line to get scanned and searched, if necessary, patiently waiting our turn as the gentleman did their jobs. All of a sudden a woman rushed up to the line and plaintively stated stated she needed to cut ahead so she wouldn't miss her flight. I was the first person she approached, although I had turned back around after first making eye contact with her as she scurried up the ramp to the gates, and was startled when she was immediately in my ear demanding her right to go ahead.
Naturally, everyone was at least a bit apprehensive about flying that day, and I was definitely not thrilled at the prospect. The way the woman approached me and demanded to get ahead stunned me and left me speechless for a moment. The screeners noticed the commotion, as the woman implored me more loudly to cut in line, to which I finally said, "of course". I had arrived well over 2 hours early for my flight, as was suggested for all airline passengers during that time. I was in no hurry.
Other folks were just as complicit with her request as I, so she approached the screeners and told them to hurry. They did their best to get her through the process as quickly as possible, but when she went through the body scanner, the alarm went off. They asked her to step aside for a search, so naturally she went ballistic and started screaming, crying, and making statements that I will not repeat here about her ethnicity; not needing to be checked, because she was an American and how she knew people and had relatives who were in law enforcement and the Knoxville City Govt., etc. All the while, she was scanning the faces of the people behind her, looking for anyone to challenge her. Luckily, we all got it. She was more important than the rest of us, who had no problem with the men doing their jobs that day because we all knew that, inconvenient as it might be, they were there to protect us. We understood that she was allowed to question these things and, because of her ties to government officials and law enforcement, she could make her own damn rules!
The VIP ended up causing such a dramatic scene that the entire operation was temporarily halted and we all had to sweat out whether we would be able to board our flights on time, and whether we would be able to meet our rides waiting for us at the places we were going, and whether we would get our bags if we had to take a later flight, etc...
Don't tell me about whether Paul was right or wrong, in principle. Tell that to the people who might not want to be held up by another passenger who is being asked to do the same damn thing that the other 9 million (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) passengers who travel through that airport every year could be asked to do. I don't think they would agree that principle does anything other than, possibly, mess up their well laid plans. It just makes you have to wait on a big baby....
