More TSA misery as wheelchair- bound woman in lingerie gets hour-long search and misses flight






By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 3:09 PM on 2nd December 2010

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A 52-year-old wheelchair-bound woman was hand searched for over an hour at the Oklahoma City airport even though she was already stripped to her bra and underwear.

The lengthy ordeal caused the blonde passenger to miss her flight.
Disabled Tammy Banovac arrived at the airport for a flight to Phoenix on Tuesdsay morning clad only in a trench coat, which she removed for security, over her black undergarments.
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Banovac chose to wear her underwear because of a nasty experience two weeks ago at airport security. She is typically hand-searched at airports because she uses a metal wheelchair

The event was captured on video by a fellow passenger.
Knowing her wheelchair would set off the metal detector, Banovac hoped to avoid an aggressive pat-down with her barely-there ensemble, accessorized with her white dog and a pearl necklace.
She told a local paper that an uncomfortable airport search two weeks ago left her feeling violated and she had hoped to avoid a repeat situation.
'If it happened anywhere else, it would have been sexual assault,' she told The Oklahoman of the previous search.
An airport spokeswoman told a CBS affiliate that she had to be subjected to the pat-down because she refused to go through the metal detector at all.


Banovac, 52, brought clothes with her to put on after she and her pet pooch cleared security

Unfortunately for Banovac, security officers then detected traces of nitrates, which can be used to make explosives, on her wheelchair. She believes the traces may have been caused by some medication or a recent hunting trip.

She then endured more than an hour of hand searches and questioning from officers, causing her to miss her flight.
She went home and repeated the security process and pat-down on Wednesday, again in just her underwear.
As no explosives were detected, she was able to make the plane to Phoenix.
Ms Banovac's ordeal is the latest in a string of highly-publicized passenger encounters with TSA as the busy holidays approach.
One woman reported she was humiliated after a body scanner showed her sanitary liner and led to a very personal underwear search by an officer.
In Phoenix, a woman was held in a glass cage and says she was tormented by officers for an hour when she refused to put breast milk through the x-ray machine. Breast milk is supposedly exempt from x-ray by official TSA regulations.

And it seems no one is spared the TSA's policies.

Actor Mark Ruffalo revealed he is on a terror watch list for his support of an anti-drilling documentary and now gets extra TSA pat-downs every time he goes to an airport.
And this week in Los Angeles the Black Peas singer Fergie was put through the so-called naked body scanner before a flight out to ensure she wasn't a threat to fellow passengers.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1334937/Tammy-Banovac-wheelchair-bound-woman-wearing-lingerie-gets-hour-long-airport-search.html#ixzz16zAgxAjF