We traveled out of Omaha one time when the kids were smaller (maybe there was only one?), and they woke the child up who was sleeping in the stroller, made her walk through, even though one of her parents was not on the other side of the screener, and they wouldn't let one of us go through first to help her.
Jerks. So now the kid is wailing, I am seriously pissed and these yahoos Xray the umbrella stroller.
Think about this. An umbrella stroller is nothing but a little bit of material stretched out over a metal frame. Xray it and what are you going to see? The same metal frame. And those little tubes I had packed full of plastique? The Xray's not going to see it because it can't see inside the tubes.
And what of these randomly selected searches? If the stats I've been teaching to undergrads for years is correct, then all this gives us is a sample of who the perps are when some plane does go down? We'll stop what, ten percent of them? Great.
I'm not going to defend their behavior, but the X-ray machine can in fact penetrate thin metal tubing like that of an umbrella stroller. They couldn't have you push the stroller through the metal detector because, well, it's metal, and that would be pointless. Obviously they should have let one of you go through first and do the "Come to momma" thing.
The randomly selected searches are about the appearance of security, not actual security. But they're also not randomly selected. If you fly on a ticket you bought the day before, or have certain ethnic looks/dress (not speaking just of Arabic here; TSA screeners can't tell the differences), you are much more likely to be searched, though they would deny this.
