Normally news of a tiny local airline which most folks have never heard of shifting its operations from one terminal to another doesn’t make the news. But SeaPort Airlines, based in Portland, Oregon, is a bit different. Their main marketing thrust when they launched service between Portland and Seattle in 2008 was that they could offer a significantly better pre-flight experience for customers because they were flying planes small enough to avoid TSA screening requirements. Even as they pulled out of the Seattle-Portland market earlier this year they were still allowing passengers to skip the screening hassle.
This past weekend, however, SeaPort moved inside the main terminal at PDX, losing that passenger benefit. Their end game is to ink interline agreements with major carriers (company President Rob McKinney claims one is coming "soon") so that SeaPort provides the last mile service to the few out-lying markets it serves rather than just carrying local traffic.
Our move the main terminal at Portland is among the most significant changes in the evolution of SeaPort Airlines over the past year, and which now has us highly-focused on providing air service that links small communities across America with the national air transportation via large airports.
Maybe it is the cynic in me but I’m quite saddened to hear that the company basically had to choose between two different versions of "better" service for their customers based in large part on the TSA and the annoyance they cause.
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Very sad. I wish i had the chance to try out getting to the airport close to arrival time and to get picked up plane side by taxi or towncar. NO more since the move to the main terminal
Are they harassing these people because their secure area is so porous that even they don’t trust it?
TSA seem to be deliberately trying to make a joke out of airline security and make Americans look like fools in the process.
In two years they have added taking naked pictures of us and our kids, fondling our privates in public, exposing us to untested x-ray scanners and subjecting us to random, warrantless interrogations that are illegal for law enforcement.
Now the expose people’s drinks to some unknown chemical when OSHA regulations require a Manufacturers Safety Data Sheet for any substance that humans contact. Why not test the drinks at the vendor instead of after a person pays $8 for a cup of coffee?
What’s next from this erratic agency, random executions? This has become a sick sideshow and we can’t take another four years of Pistole and Napolitano. TSA must be made to act responsibly before it reaches the point when public resentment ends in an ugly backlash.