CWA, which represents more than 50,000 flight attendants at 22 airlines. Many passengers don’t realize how much cockpit access flight attendants have, she adds. “When a pilot steps out of the cockpit, a flight attendant must be in the cockpit.” 

Passengers have also complained loudly about the invasive scans, which render a naked image, and the “enhanced pat-downs,” which require whole-hand rubbing against all parts of the body. Most passengers fly infrequently, however, making checkpoint screenings a rare indignity. 

For those who go through checkpoints daily, the risks – and indignities – are larger. Pilots’ unions, concerned about the disproportionately high exposure to the scans’ radiation, urged their members not to walk through the Advanced Imaging Technology scanners, pointing out that there are no long-term studies looking at cumulative effects on pregnant women, those with compromised immune systems, and others. 

Pilots and flight attendants in uniform are still subject to security, but as of Friday, they get what everyone got until last month: a walk through a metal detector and, if that gets triggered, a quick secondary screening. The metal-detecting wands are gone for good, but the secondary scan for airplane crew will be the back-of-the-hands pat-down that passengers remember from before the new protocols went into place on November 1.

In order to become a flight attendant, a man or woman – and it’s usually a woman, in this industry with more than five women on the job for each man – must be fingerprinted and receive a detailed 10-year background check.