With no body scanners at Bob Hope Airport, few travelers express worry

Travelers departing Bob Hope Airport Tuesday expressed little concern about heightened Transportation Security Administration measures as they departed just before the busiest travel day of the year.

“Nope. They are keeping me safe,” Ellen Cowie of Tujunga said as she walked toward TSA officials at Terminal A. “I’ve been scanned before, and it did not bother me one bit.”

Some passengers were asked to step aside for a manual pat down, the most controversial of the measures that TSA instituted Nov. 1. But the airport does not have a full-body scanner, airport spokesman Victor Gill said.

TSA officials say the number of complaints the agency has received is tiny compared to the volume of travelers.

“We’ve seen about 3,000 complaints from the end of October to yesterday,” said Nico Melendez, a spokesman for TSA operations in California, Hawaii and Arizona. “That’s out of about 40 million passengers.”

Melendez said TSA had contingency plans if people engage in what he called an “irresponsible” protest of security procedures on Wednesday, though he declined to elaborate.

“We expect passengers will help us out with security measures and cooperate, as they always do,” he said.

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