Most air travelers opting in, not out

It appeared there were plenty of people opting out Wednesday at McCarran International Airport -- opting out of National Opt-Out day, that is.

The effort to rally passengers to refuse the full-body imaging scanners and instead submit to a pat-down did not appear to take at McCarran, where travelers moved swiftly through security lines. Passengers arriving from various cities throughout the country also said they had not encountered any hassles or delays.

Jeremy Martin and Alberto Ortiz flew in from Wichita, Kan., where they had observed no protesters. When asked whether they would have a problem using McCarran's scanners, each said no.

"In my opinion, people are overreacting," Martin said.

"I don't have a problem with it," Ortiz said of the "naked" scanners and the pat-downs. "When things get by, people ask, 'Where was security?' Then when they go through security, they complain."

Around the nation, the planned protest seemed to fizzle.

Most Thanksgiving travelers selected for full-body scans and pat-downs chose to submit to them rather than create havoc on one of the busiest flying days of the year.

In fact, in some parts of the nation, bad weather was shaping up as a bigger threat to travelers' hopes of getting to their destinations on time.

For days, activists had waged a loosely organized campaign on the Internet to encourage airline passengers to refuse full-body scans and insist on a pat-down in what was dubbed National Opt-Out Day. But as of Wednesday afternoon, the cascading delays and monumental lines that many feared would result had not materialized.

"It was a day at the beach, a box of chocolates," said Greg Hancock, 61, who breezed through security at the Phoenix airport on the way to a vacation in California. He was sent through a body scanner after a golf ball marker set off the metal detector.

His wife, Marti Hancock, 58, said that ever since she was in the air on Sept. 11, 2001, and feared there was a bomb on her plane, she has been fully supportive of stringent security: "If that's what you have to do to keep us safe, that's what you have to do."

The Transportation Security Administration said few people seemed to be opting out. Some protesters did show up, including one man seen walking around the Salt Lake City airport in a skimpy, Speedo-style bathing suit, and others carrying signs denouncing the TSA's screening methods as unnecessarily intrusive and embarrassing.

By most accounts, though, the lines moved smoothly, and there was no more or less congestion at major U.S. airports than in previous years on the day before Thanksgiving.

"I would go so far as to say that National Opt-Out Day was a big bust," said Genevieve Shaw Brown, a spokeswoman for the travel company Travelocity, which had staff at 12 of the nation's largest airports watching for problems.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.