Oh, and I fly back Monday 2/12/07. I’ll be sure to post an update since I don’t need to bother getting rid of the thing, apparently. So, may as well leave the fucker in the bag for the trip back.
Which is odd, because while I have a bunch of techs under me and frequently end up grabbing their tools on jobs, this screwdriver doesn’t look faimiliar…
-Joe
They’ll give you a water on the plane.
Maybe you should learn how to travel properly? I CONSTANTLY travel for business, as do all my collegues. Unless it’s right after a major incident, it simply does not take hours to go through security.
I could be wrong but so far I haven’t noticed any “terrorism=paranoia” opinions coming from anyone in a place that could possibly be (or has been) attacked…I work in Midtown Manhattan and I resent people in Iowa telling me that I’m paranoid to be worrying about terrorism. If anything, I think that we could stand to worry a little more than we do, here in the city. However, I agree that it is ineffective to concentrate efforts on “airports” in general, paying attention to random airports in Kansas and wherever, and ignoring crucial ground routes in cities of high risk. It makes no sense for you to have to wait longer in Boise, while the Holland Tunnel remains a cinch to pass through.
It has before in Tampa - and that’s not even counting the “oops, our metal detector was unplugged” incident.
But, keep preaching. Maybe reality will change if you preach long enough.
-Joe
Yes, I know they’ll give you water on the plane. However, Martini’s concern was that the water passed out on the plane to those of us in steerage tastes crappy and was not readily available. On a recent 9 hour flight beverages were offered in coach a total of 3 times. In addition I have seen reports and have concerns about the actual water quality on airplanes epa site on airline water quality. While the water given to coach passengers appears to be from liter sized bottles I have seen these bottles being refilled at the tap in the galley. I would really like someone in the airline industry to come in and say this is not done anymore and us coachlets are getting good water in our 4 ounce cups. Until then I’ll buy bottled water in an airport shop or bite the bullet and buy it on the plane.
And US airline people (I’m looking at you American), why do you give us cokes and other sodas for free but charge us $2.00 for a bottle of water?
Whatever. Feel free to whine and complain like a bunch of crybabbies if you like. There’s no pleasing people:
-If security focuses on Middle Easterners then it’s racial profiling. If they randomly check children or old people they are foolishly wasting their time.
-If security is too tight, people complain that the wait is too long and that it’s intrusive. If it’s not tight enough they say it’s a joke.
-If some guy tries to blow up a plane with his shoe, people wonder why he was able to get an exploding shoe aboard, and then get mad that they need to have their shoes x-rayed.
-You get mad when they take your nailclipper and then gloat how you can sneak a carbon-fiber samuri sword in your pants
Bottom line is you always have and always will have to go through security to board a plane. If you don’t like it, go take a bus or something.
Funny, I’ve actually said nothing like that, and I don’t recall seeing any of it in the thread. The only thing you got even remotely correct was that security IS a joke - because they focus on the wrong things.
But I understand that when you have nothing besides an extremely narrow perspective on the universe you need to tilt strawmen.
-Joe
How about you watch your tone? I’m not one of your screwdriver techs and it’s not my fault you find air travel so unpleasent.
What should they focus on? Some guy tried to blow up a plane with a shoe - now shoes are x-rayed. A plot to use liquid explosives was uncovered - now liquids
are restricted.
I feel so safe now that I can’t take a large size bottle of hand sanitizer to work with me even though the chance of me getting some form of terminal disease is far higher than getting blown up on a plane. I guess that Lufthansa thinks that seeing I’m going to the desert I must be a camel, so they give out water by the dropper even in business class. I can’t imagine what they do in cattle class, if anything. Probably showers or something.
I am so glad that the Frankfurt security people had me take the 100ml bottle of perfume I had bought for my wife and place it in a baggy and was carrying in my hand out in the open. It was already wrapped in the plastic it came in but that other layer of plastic would contain any explosion and my feeble attempts to remove it from within. It is still in the baggy sitting at home as no one in my family can figure out how to get it out. Those security guards are cunning I tell you. Cunning! Actually, I think the only thing the baggy would do would be to help mask any chemical sensors they might have to check for actual explosives.
I wonder why it is after an event that they decide to implement these checks. It’s not like nobody knew you could smuggle stuff in your shoe. Maxwell Smart knew that in the 60’s. The third DieHard movie had liquid explosives as its core theme. All before these incidents ever occurred. Why can’t they think of these things before they happen? And if they can’t, why do we trust the same people to be even able to stop the threats they currently know about? Both take imagination that doesn’t seem evident.
So why don’t we check air crew for mental stability before each flight? After all, there’s been at least one crash attributed to a suicidal co-pilot.*
The point that many of us are making is that risk is a part of life, and total risk elimination is not possible. More than that, many of the procedures currently in place often seem as useful as a screen door on an airlock. As an example, I’ve heard that there’s a major problem with some chemical detection procedures being used: the one I’d heard about gives false positives when exposed to glycerine residue, which is commonly found on the hair of people who’ve recently shampooed. So, the procedure is to ask, in the event of a positive, whether the passenger had shampooed. Once the passenger confirms that he or she has, the passenger is allowed to board.
I find it hard to believe that someone using an explosive with a glycerine base wouldn’t be able to recognize the correct answer the screener was looking for, and then be able to get aboard, anyways. Especially if the false positive is as common as I’d think it would be.
*I know that Egypt Air has been very vocal about denying the possibility of the suicide theory, but from what I recall they’ve not provided a compelling alternative theory, either.
Do you have any evidence for this?
Experienced travellers know that speed of travel relates to the whole journey. The time spent getting from your door to the airport, onto the plane, off the plane and to the door of where you are going all counts too.
I don’t think I’ve seen much if any criticism of measures imposed in the immediate emergency response to the explosive liquid scare. I think it is the fact that those measures continued after time for careful consideration that is regarded as notably dumbass.
A key point made in this thread is that the cost of current anti-terrorism measures is totally disproportionate to the threat and that the same money spent effectively in areas of actual danger to life and limb would make a much greater difference. So unless you have any actual facts and figures to refute that, it would appear that you are the one who cares less about whether people live or die.
Oh, wah. You’re the only throwing around “crybabies” in GD. How about you watch the insults? I’m sure you’re all very important and everything, but I’m not sure why I’m supposed to give a shit. I personally find air travel unpleasant.
Unless I buy them past the checkpoint. But I’m not allowed to take them onto the plane. Unless I were to make the radical combination of my explosive water and, say, a BAG that I’ll CARRY ON to the plane. Thank god the terrorists haven’t figured out that they can put an object into a container! I wonder what super-duper security procedures are carried out on the cases of bottled water they bring into the airport that they couldn’t perform on my bottle of water?
I see from the signs posted around here (pointed metal object still in the bottom of my laptop) we can now carry on 3.4Oz or less of liquid. .4Oz more…here we are one more step closer to Certain Death. If it makes it to 3.5Oz we’re all doomed, I imagine.
In the meantime, here I am with a pointed metal object with a convenient non-slip handle so I can grip it nice and tight without it flying out of my hand. It was never pulled out of my bag, so I’m guessing our X-Ray Guy doesn’t actually know whether or not it’s been sharpened to a nice point.
Your security procedures that you think are to be followed with a happy bovine grin are a fucking placebo. If you can’t recognize that, that’s your own defect.
-Joe
When slandering liberals one needs no evidence.
-Joe
I find that a very childish thing for you to say to me.
Your contentless post noted.
I come from “terrorist country”. I found out that my little brother was in the list of targets when he was 2 months old (can someone please explain to me how a 2mo can be an enemy of the people?), along with everybody else who has the bad luck to carry my lastname.
So I’ve been living with the knowledge that some people want me personally dead (and not even for personal reasons) since I was 8. 30 years.
I’ve flown out of Bilbao, Pamplona and Zaragoza many times, as well as UK airports and US airports and Latin American airports. In Spain and the UK the security measures are a lot speedier and less intrusive than in the US; nowhere in those countries will you see blocks of concrete half-blocking the doors; the water restrictions apply only when flying to That Paranoid Country Overseas. And you can’t walk from the street to the tarmac directly. Or into the hangars by mistake.
In the US I’ve been in airports where you could walk into the hangars by mistake. No physical barriers. Walking through the actual main doors was a gimkana, but once you went through you could just take the lift that’s in front of the door, punch the lowest number and, as you go to exit, say “oops!” Isn’t putting some locks in those lifts an itsy bit more important than worrying about some baby’s bottle being full of gelignite?