>Please let us know. I'll be interested to find out. I seem to be included in the random searches everytime I fly and believe me, I look like a typical American. My daughter has been stopped as well and she is a very thin, 13 year old, blue eyed blonde. We do always carry a small carryone with us though because I have travelled so many times where my luggage dissappeared and finally showed up a week or two after I returned home. I think they grab a few unlikely suspects and throw them into the mix so as not to appear to be profiling...
OK, here's my report. On the way to Europe, I passed only one security check, here in Norfolk. To my immesurable surprise, they singled out the guy behind me. Shortening my beard may have helped.
In Atlanta, the check for the Paris flight was ridiculous. I just had enough time to find my way through the corridors (aka halls... which makes one think, why do they have city halls here?), and there was one single lady handling the boarding and the passport check and collecting everybody's I-94s. The plane wasn't even half full, but she was seriously understaffed nevertheless. In Paris, there was just a regular metal detector, nobody was frisked - who cares what gets aboard JAT's plane.
On the way back, I went through very thorough check in Belgrade - the guy even searched one lady's purse, because there was something looking like a hint of a nail clipper on the x-ray image. In Paris, I got frisked twice, even though I was travelling in just shirt, shorts and sandals. Second time I even had to tell the names of faces printed on Serbian money that I still had. The guy let me off when I put him to shame for not knowing who Nikola Tesla was.
And then finally on JFK just a regular metal detector with my belt buckle being detected (doesn't do that each time - sometime it simply doesn't cause the frame to beep).
All in all, I think I wasn't really profiled in Paris. First time they did that to pretty much everybody; second time it was a result of my answers to some of the questions (like why don't I have a business card). What struck me as odd was the asymmetry - on the way out of the States, they don't really care. If you want to blow a plane full of Americans, do it with those who are so ungrateful as to try to leave the country, you won't be checked much.
