Direct from TSA - the film question

[Huss]

Just got back from a trip to Hawaii. TSA were very nice and polite and hand checked my 120 and 35mm film.
On a recent trip to England, TSA was great here, but the person in Heathrow/London was not and fogged my film. You know when someone can help you out but decides from the get go not to? it's when they give you a 10 minute explanation as to why they can't do it.. I have a feeling my film made multiple passes through the x-ray machine there...
And yes, I was polite and respectful. Maybe I caught him on a bad day.

 

[willie_901]

The TSA employs on a strategy of being completely unpredictable in the implementation of security procedures. This is how come they did an explosives residue swipe of my 88 year old mother's elastic knee support as she sat in a wheel chair. This is why they insisted my 4 year old grandson remove his flimsy, extremely thin flip-flops for X-ray scanning. This is how come the wife of a friend who had top-secret security clearance as a defense contractor consultant is never randomly chosen for TSA pre-approval yet his wife (who was a school teacher for decades) was selected for TSA pre-approval four times in a row.

The point is - transporting film during air travel will result in many different experiences. I happened to have a bad experience once and was treated reasonably reasonable the other times I traveled with film.