Dear Editors:

I submit the following in the hope that it will find its way into your editorial pages.

FWA Loses a Fan

My daughter recently visited us from her home in North Carolina. She flew into Fort Wayne International Airport (FWA). She said, “[Arriving at FWA] I kind of felt sorry for Fort Wayne Airport as I walked through the terminal. It was practically empty.” Her pity was overcome by the experience she endured when departing FWA. The first thing that happened was that they would not check her bag (despite my having paid the fee for bag check) because the attendant was busy chatting on the telephone. By the time he hung up, it was only 27 minutes prior to the flight – 3 minutes too late to check her bag. My daughter then went through the peepshow xray machine. A female TSA agent (that's Team Sexual Assault) was waiting for her on the other side of the peepshow. But, my daughter is a very attractive 20 year old, so when she came through the other side, another female TSA agent scrambled to change places with the awaiting agent so that she could sexually assault my daughter by feeling her breasts. I'd use kinder words, but that's what it was, plain and simple. So invasive was this “search” that my daughter remarked to the agent, “Yes, they're real.”

As I watched this through the glass, I have never felt such a failure as a father. I was actually witnessing my daughter being sexually assaulted and I was doing nothing about it. I didn't because I knew that if I did the only result would be that I would be taken to jail, forced to pay a fine I couldn't afford and my daughter would likely be unable to board her flight and return home and to college.

When my daughter arrived at Charlotte, she called me and said she would never again fly into Fort Wayne. She said, “They didn't do that to me in Charlotte. They didn't do that to me in Detroit. That is an awful way to treat people. It's disgusting.” As a private pilot I hate to hear my daughter so utterly disgusted with any aspect of aviation. But as an American I hate even more the abolition of our most basic rights.