AIRLINE passengers have hit out at a new pat-down technique used in the US, likening it to "foreplay".

Trialled at Logan International Airport in Boston, the search involves security staff sliding their hand over passengers, if they object to going through full-body imaging scanners.

The new security search is due to be rolled out to 450 airports across the country.

However, passengers and civil liberty groups have called the pat-downs “horribly invasive”.

“The new searches amount to a foreplay pat-down that for many people is going to 'feel like a moral issue'”, Kate Hinni, founder of the non-profit FlyersRights.org consumer group, told the UK’s Mail Online.

One search left Rosemary Fitzpatrick - a reporter for CNN - in tears after she was subjected to the new pat-down when the underwire in her bra set off metal detecting scanners in Orlando, Florida.

Ms Fitzpatrick said she felt “helpless and violated” as she was felt around her breasts and buttocks by a female security officer.



“As an experienced traveller for work who was in tears for most of the search process, I have never experienced a more traumatic and invasive travel event,” she said.



The reporter immediately sent a complaint email to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), saying she was not warned about the new procedures.

“It appears once you enter the security area, passengers forfeit their rights. There were no signs, video information, etc. at the entrance of the security area the airport. Why?” Ms Fitzpatrick wrote in the email.



TSA spokesman Kristin Lee said the pat-down method is being used to help detect hidden and dangerous items like explosives or bomb parts.



She said passengers will continue to be searched by screeners when something on the passenger sets off the metal detector, when the imaging technology detects something suspicious on the passenger and when the passenger opts out of the electronic screening methods.



Passengers who refuse to walk through the full-body image scanners are subjected to the searches, and the TSA also picks random passengers for the searches.



“We question the effectiveness of the methods that are being presented and the choice that travellers are being given,” Chris Ott, a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, said.



'Travellers are being asked to choose between being scanned ‘naked’ and exposed to radiation, or getting what people are describing as just a highly invasive search by hands of their entire bodies.”



Last week a pilot was stood down after refusing to walk through a full-body scanner.



Michael Roberts, a pilot of US domestic airline ExpressJet, said he felt uncomfortable walking through the newly installed security equipment at Memphis International Airport.



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