You want security on airlines? Then lock the cabin doors, and make everyone walk past the vicinity of a trained bomb-sniffing dog. And then let them on the plane, because that’s about the maximum level of security that’s possible. If you want the elaborate sort of security theater that the TSA specializes in, then ask yourself this: What happens if someone sets off a bomb in the middle of that long maze-line leading up to the security checkpoint?
This. As a frequent business traveler, I can tell you that being out of contact isn’t the end of the world. Plenty of planes still don’t have WIFI.
The issues are:
- Many of my trips are one, two, or even zero nights. It will be infuriating to check bags for the 45 minute shuttle to NYC, especially then the bag is nothing but a briefcase
B. I’ve had enough luggage lost that I ask this: When I arrive in Germany to work, and my laptop doesn’t show up with me, what now? Vacation?
iii. Many people have extremely sensitive information on their computers and they won’t be happy about having that in someone else’s hands. Indeed, it could be quite the opportunity for criminals. Not finding the used laptops, but getting scanning them. Companies like GE, Deutsche Bank, Exxon Mobil have thousands of employees traveling every day and their computers could contain some very interesting info
The actual risk from terrorism is very low. And while security measures do keep it there, I believe we are way past the point of diminishing returns. Meanwhile we don’t care near as much about alcohol deaths, traffic fatalities, or probably 400 other preventable things that kill more people.
I’ve passed through nearly every major airport in the U.S. in the last few years, and one of them has a very narrow walkway into and out of a gate area. It’s been configured that way because of all the TSA equipment - the area was obviously designed pre-911. But the only time I’ve ever felt remotely uneasy was passing through this area. People are forced to walk in twos and in some choke points single-file. Forget a bomb or active shooter. I was afraid of what might happen if there was a fire or panic due to a precautionary evacuation.
Siam Sam, I’m still hoping you’ll respond to my question from post #11. I’m genuinely interested in what you would consider unacceptable in security measures.
In all honesty, this is the argument stopper for me right here. Things brough in carryon are more rigorously screened than checjked baggage. A person clever enough to turn a Dell into a plane-crashing bomb and surely wire up a timer, or a trigger than can be activated with a remote car starter or some other innocuous device.
No major security scanner manufacturer to lobby and to sell the idea of danger to be solved in the American way, by the expensive technology and very showy marketing displaoys.
On the bright side, maybe this will stop the TSA agents from stealing from luggage.
I agree wholeheartedly. The damage to American freedom and values inflicted on 9/11, was infinitesimal compared to that which was self inflicted thereafter.
It’s an employment program.
I am kind of surprised that business travel has not gone down. What with instant communication.
I used to fly with a netbook, just to have at my destination. Don’t really need that anymore. I do fly with a Kindle, and cell phone.
More and more airlines are charging for carry on bags too. That seems to be helping with the over stuffed overhead storage, and the people that seem to think that a huge duffle bag is just fine. That charging for bags in the hold created this problem should have been obvious before it was implemented.
And (a bit off topic), the way airlines are ‘keeping’ their seat pitch is to remove seat padding so the seats themselves are thinner front to back. They can fit in an extra row that way. Can’t we PLEASE just charge another $5-10 per seat so we can be somewhat comfortable?
A *real flat out ban – say, NO electronics larger than an Galaxy S8 Plus anywhere on the plane, neither carry-on nor hold – would at least be more internally consistent than “just not in carry-on”.
(*but would we be able to also carry our backup battery packs?)
Regarding a comment above, I’m looking at a battery for one of my laptops – this is a quite substantial object, you *could *load it with either HE or incendiaries so as to cause serious damage (OTOH a law abiding passenger could use it to bash some would-be hijacker’s head).
(I remember once upon a time when carrying on laptops was still not that common, I would ocassionally be asked to turn it on and off at the checkpoint. Today that could slow the line down to a stop.)
The major change I remember around the time of Lockerbie was the “did you pack this yourself and has it been in your custody ever since” question - based of course on the now-quaint notion nobody’d be out to blow themselves up on purpose.
[on the sideline comment]
Sure. As soon as you fix humans (and employer travel-reimbursement offices) so they stop shopping for the absolute lowest posted base price above everything else regardless of whether it’s at 25" pitch with 4 stops, 35 minute layovers, departing at 3 am local and with no onboard service.
[/on the sideline comment]
Yes, there is such a thing as security theater. My ex-wife gets extra scrutiny every time she flies for some unknown reason despite the fact that she has flown countless times a year for over 40 years. Once we were running late, she was getting her customary patdown and interrogation session when our then two year old daughter rushed in past the security area to see her mother. You would have thought is was a terrorist attack based on the response. She had to start the security process all over. The reason given was that “she could have slipped her something”. Really? A two year old girl with American parents is now a potential terrorist assistant?
The irony is that the 9/11 attackers made no official security violations. It was just a psychological attack that exploited weaknesses in airline procedures dating back to the 1970’s when hijackings were common. It had little to do with the simple boxcutters that they used.
It is perfectly possible to blow up a plane today without any noticeable security violations as well. The weak point isn’t the passengers. It is airport staff and the pilots. Some passengers have gotten good at mitigating the threat posed by other passengers but there is nothing you can do when a pilot decides to go on a suicide mission especially when the cockpit has been made impenetrable.
The problem is that airline travel is so insanely safe that trying to push safety beyond the six sigma level leads to ever decreasing cost/benefits and can never be fully achieved. We all know that it sucks when a plane crashes for whatever reason but the number of those can’t be much closer to zero than it already is. It is a fool’s errand to expect that it won’t happen again because of one of the countless potential reasons.
They could get rid of most post 9/11 security theater without any increase in actual incidents.
In a heartbeat! An airline where I don’t have to take off my shoes, where I can bring my pocket knife on board with me, where passengers can play solitaire on their laptops, and eat yogurt they brought with them, and drink their own grape juice? Sign me up, that’s now my preferred carrier.
Yes, I want the cabin doors locked. And I’d be happy to have trained dogs check all the people and luggage for explosives. That would be a upgrade in actual security, as well as an improvement in comfort and convenience.
Now, where can I find this wonderful airline?
How accurate are bomb-sniffing dogs? I’ve heard some very bad things about drug-sniffing ones (which probably deliberate by handlers in some cases, I admit).
So you never fly to and inside the Africa any more?
I am a total yellow bellied coward when it comes to authority, but I got pretty close to getting arrested by the TSA at the airport in Orlando. I was returning from a vacation with my six year old daughter.
She walked happily through the scanner ahead of me, and no problems. I walked through, no problem. Then the TSA guy said “Sir, we’ve selected her for extra pat-down screening” or whatever the term is for when they look under your clothes.
I thought I’d misunderstood. “Okay, where can she wait while you search me…”
“No, we’re searching her. You can be present while we…”
“No,” I said.
The guy stiffened. “Well, sir, we are.”
“No,” I said, “You’re not, sir. You are not searching my little girl.”
“We have to. If you’ll…”
“I don’t care. You aren’t searching her. It’s not happening.”
I’d say “I don’t know what got into me” but of course I do know what got into me; I was a man protecting his daughter. My fight or flight response had been triggered, and what I was doing was objectively risky and stupid, but I could no more stop myself than I could grow a new arm.
“Well, sir, you’ll just have to…”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” I said, and crossed my arms.
Well, the guy could have gone one of two ways, I guess. One way is he could quite “rightly” have tried to search her and then I would have tried to physically stop and gotten tasered or shot and it would have been all over the news and I wouldn’t sued if I’d survived, or I could have at least gotten arrested and they’d have had to call the Canadian consulate and it would have been in the news.
The second way was he could have decided he was asking to do an objectively stupid and insulting thing, apologize, and just carry on.
He chose Option 2, thank heavens. So he was an okay guy. I’m not proud I did that, because I didn’t really feel like I chose to.
So anyway, to answer the OP’s question, this is going to get worse until people stop flying. My wife no longer wants to travel to the USA for vacation, in part because of this shit. I won’t fly anywhere I can possibly drive to in the USA, because of this shit, and my enthusiasm for travel to the States is declining fast. If it gets worse, Americans will stop flying domestically as much as they currently do - it’s happened before, as it did after 9/11.
I agree. I would take one as well. In fact, they already exist but you wouldn’t know that unless your primary concern is figuring out where to put this week’s pallets of cash. NetJets among others will send a plane and crew to you on your schedule to virtually any airport. You just walk on with no security because security is for plebes. Some large companies still have corporate jets for the same reason.
I am a ticket hacker and don’t pay for personal airline travel myself but the situation has gotten annoying since 9/11 and that was a one-off. That is called “closing the barn door after the cows are out”. It isn’t going to happen the same way again. If someone really wanted to bring down a lot of airliners, it still isn’t that difficult and it isn’t going to be done with a pocket knife and a bottle of Gatorade (Hi NSA!). It will most likely be done by internal cooperation and/or devices planted in the cargo holds.
The accuracy and reliably of bomb sniffing dogs is highly dubious.
Properly trained detection dogs, for one thing, are all specialists. A dog trained to sniff narcotics doesn’t know dynamite from doughnuts; you have to limit their pointing behaviour to very few substances because, as I’m sure you know, dogs can smell EVERYTHING. To a dog, a pair of smelly socks is just as interesting and smelly as C-4. or heroin. So if a bomb is made of a substance the dog isn’t trained to detect, the dog might as well be a housecat. The dog won’t point the bomb.
But even if the dog is extremely well trained to detect a set of substances, and they can be awfully good at it, dogs are only as good as the dog handler. A dog that is eye-poppingly accurate in a controlled environment may not perform well in a busy, crowded, smelly airport if her handler makes errors. Dogs have to be directed towards a target - contrary to movies, they don’t magically detect one smell against 50,000 from miles away. They can be distracted, misdirected, or poorly commanded. A would be terrorist can avoid canine detection by simply staying away from the dog; if the handler does not give the dog opportunity to get close and inspect the terrorists’s bag, there will not be a point. And that’s assuming the dog is operating at peak perfrmance. Dogs get tired and pissed off or they smell something really awesome and it carries their attention away.
Handlers are human, of course, and they can’t search everyone. So they’re only going to direct the dog to sniff things they find suspicious, or they’ll try to be random because they’re afraid of being called racist, or whatever.
The sheer stupidity of the sheep to accept the ridiculous security theatre since the September 11 attacks in the USA is insane. And it is not just air travel, the Chicago Transit Authority has idiotic random bag searches, delaying commuters during rush hour. This wasn’t instituted after the London attacks or Madrid attacks, it was just done a couple of years ago, probably by some idiot bureaucrat to justify his/her budget.
Some idiot in Manchester UK sets off a bomb at a concert? So, now we need to deploy a phalanx of police officers at Chicago Cubs games at Wrigley Field, taking officers off the street and allowing petty criminals to happily break into cars, apartments, and mug people in the area around the stadium since the police are providing security theatre at a ball game.
[quote=“Lemur866, post:3, topic:787608”]
The thing is, a bomb small enough to fit into a laptop isn’t going to be big enough to take down the plane.
I am not an explosive expert, chances are, neither are you. Do you have a source for this claim?
There has been much discussion about this. All the sober articles indicate in the standard laptop where the bomb is configured around the battery size as the mode of the evasion of detection, it is no way strong enough to do more than penetrate the skin if well placed.
The actual incident in the Somalia that seems to have the Americans motivated is discussed here and here. It is notable that the airline pilots found the airport security Zero and there are the suspicious circumstances around the handling of the security screening…
In any case the analysis of this approach that has been said publicly all is unanimous in the statement it is the battery based evasion and the terrorist needs to be properly placed and at the right altitude - or end up like the idiot in Somalia who only killed himself.
Of course it is nice and handy also to start a non controllable and escalating battery fire in the cargo hold by the remote detonation when the cargo is nicely filled with plenty of other battery power electronics with the known and proven fire risk.
But the terrorist organizations have observed as the case of the complete failures of the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber, to be failures is not so bad, for it can provoke great hysteria among the Americans.