BAOs: To give you the gist of it, whenever a piece of luggage goes through screening and looks “bad”, BAOs get called. Likewise they test screeners as well as train them.
During this internship I have been shuffled between people and various departments in order to gain a better understanding of what happens at TSA behind the scenes. I think at this point Wes has gradually run out of places for me observe a department or shadow someone. There are so many different components to such a large organization, but understandably not every department or person is suitable for me to shadow. Anyway, since working at the checkpoint I have always been interested in what the BAOs do; no one mentioned if I could shadow them during my internship. Because of this I strolled in to their office on Tuesday and asked if I could shadow them, I should mention that no one EVER goes in their office. The Supervisor said that I could shadow the department but that there were certain things that I would have to skip out on. (makes sense..) Unfortunately my internship hours are a bit complicated to work with, in conjunction with the BAOs, so I was told to come back on Wednesday and they would let me know if anything else came up that I could tag along for in the future.
BAOs are stationed at the main office almost 24/7, I believe there are no flights for a three or four hours period in the early morning. (don’t quote me on that) I spent the first hour learning a bit more about what the BDOs do and afterwards I followed one of them (Steven) to the Airport. Steven went to two different checkpoints to give a class that some new-hires and transfers had missed out on. He ended up giving the same class a total of three times and I would like to think that because of the repetition, the information got ingrained in my head. The class was interesting and it was great to see how enthusiastic the TSOs were; unfortunately supervisors aren’t always supportive of classes and refuse to release TSOs so that they can occasionally attend a class.
On our way back to the main office Steven got a call and before I knew it we were speeding back to the airport, me made it there in record time. It turned out that one of the checkpoints had a bag in its x-ray that looked pretty bad. Since Steven was one of two people on call he was the one to respond. I’m not going to lie, it was pretty neat; our race back to the airport was like something out of a movie. Although Steven is allowed to park the car RIGHT in front of the airport and just run in, we parked across the street and jogged in to the terminal. Correction, he jogged through the exit while I speed walked through security and then stood off to the side.
Even though I’ve gotten this amazing amount of access along with this internship I wasn’t sure if this was one of those things that I wasn’t really privy to, so I just watched Steven from afar and then later got a re-cap of the whole thing. The bag that he had been called in for ended up being alright. It belonged to a roadie who had a few electronics that just did not look right on the x-ray image.
I think that is so interesting that you did your internship at the airport through the TSA! Probably so many interesting things go on ! I would love to learn about that!
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