New airline restrictions, oy.

[Ranchoth]

@Death_of_Rats

If ran Al Queda this would be my plan. Find one expendable idiot to attack a flight in the most asinine way possible and every American gets punished for it for years to come by our own Government. You don’t need the plan to be sucessful or even remotely workable. For a few hundred dollars, including the cost of the ticket, you get the media to spread your fear, the TSA to punish the innocent and the American Government gets all of the blame.

Personally, I’m kinda guessing this was the plan. You send a guy on a terror attack that probably won’t work, but that looks like it could have worked, and then start a panic with people trying to “DO SOMETHING!1!!”. It’s not going to be a history making slaughterfest, but it’s a harrasment tactic, against a troubled industry during a bad economic period, and thats going to further mess with the transportation infrastructure.

Hell, if I were them, I’d probably send some idiots to get arrested trying to break into a baby food factory while carrying a bag labeled “RADIOACTIVE RABIES POWDER (Bag # 3 of 18),” and watch the sparks fly as the media frenzies and they start sending sniffer dogs and geiger counters through the supermarkets.

You’d have people blaming the government for not stopping this before it happened; critisizing them for over/underreacting in response; others bemoaning how things are getting like 1984/Vietnam, and how they’re still not winning against a bunch of savages living in caves, and it’s all Bush’s fault…not a coup de grace war winner, but another brick in the wall.

[Zsofia]

Hey, if I were doing it I’d send twenty guys with fertilizer truck bombs to twenty random American small towns and really scare the shit out of people. What’s with the fucking around with airplanes? Airplanes are hard to blow up. You want to scare people, make them think it could happen anywhere, any time, to anybody.

[LouisB]

I’m so glad I’m out of the job market; I hope to never fly again.The last time I flew was from Reno to San Francisco to Beijing and then, of course, back again. I was treated courteously everywhere I went and then I returned to Reno, to deal with the biggest low rent TSA prick you ever saw. I was made to stand by while my luggage was searched and everything I owned picked through; gift wrapping was ripped loose, etc., etc. All because of a spelling error of my middle name. And this was in Reno, a city that lives on tourists. My middle name is Louis; it was misspelled as Lewis; an error that is absolutely common. Two of the people that were assigned to search my luggage apologized as they were doing it. I really wanted to report the jerk but that would have probably resulted in my name being added to some “hassle the hell out of this guy” data base.

I have a relative who is a commercial pilot, flying large airplanes filled with people; he is the captain of airliners and has to endure the same crap we do and who is then turned loose with absolute command of an airplane loaded with passengers. That somehow seems very inefficient and incompetent to me. There is no way some minimum wage jerk with a badge can have anyway of even guessing the havoc that the captain of an airliner might commit; we should be grateful they are willing to be humiliated but mature enough to devote their concentration on saving our lives.

[Uzi]

Ravenman, you really believe that Usama isn’t pleased that for essentially pennies he can cause the West to jump through hoops and cost us billions of dollars? Incredible.

[Ravenman]

@Uzi

Ravenman, you really believe that Usama isn’t pleased that for essentially pennies he can cause the West to jump through hoops and cost us billions of dollars? Incredible.

Where do you get the figure billions of dollars?

I would think he would give this attempted attack somewhere in the range of a D+, C- or so. The effort was to bring down an airliner, but obviously the chances of success were not ideal. If this was indeed retaliation for the air strikes against Al Qaeda training camps, which apparently killed dozens of terrorists, then it wasn’t a very effective response at all. Just like the bomb itself, in this context the attack was a fizzle.

ETA:
[Sean Connery voice]“You want to know how to get to Amerikka? They pull out a Predator, you pull out an underwear bomb. They send 30 of yours to the morgue, you cause four days of tightened security measures. That’s the Al Qaeda way!”[/SCv]

[Uzi]

@Ravenman

Where do you get the figure billions of dollars?

The time spent waiting in line at security checkpoints, the canceled flights, people not traveling, people avoiding the US due to the higher security issues. Since 2001 it would have to be in the billions.

[Ravenman]

I seem to recall an terrorist attack somewhere around the time that airport security tightened. Am I misremembering? Was that attack successful? Did it kill many innocent people? My google-fu isn’t working well right now, and I could use your help.

[Uzi]

And there was an attempted terrorist attack this time. Yes?
The security theater and economic fallout is an indirect benefit of those attacks for Al-Queda.

[Spoons]

@Ravenman

I would think he would give this attempted attack somewhere in the range of a D+, C- or so. The effort was to bring down an airliner…

No. The attempt in the airliner was the means to an end. I doubt very much that Osama or any of his cronies believed it would succeed. Instead, I’d suggest that the real effort was designed to send the West into a tizzy, create longer airport delays, disrupt airline schedules again, cause people to avoid flying or even moving around their own country at a time when a lot of them would be, cause the West to spend even greater sums reacting with more security and police personnel, and generally create a lot more fear and chaos in the Western world.

Yes, I’d say he and his friends are in their caves, laughing at their success. And all it cost them was a fanatical soldier and a small explosive.

[Ravenman]

@Uzi

And there was an attempted terrorist attack this time. Yes?
The security theater and economic fallout is an indirect benefit of those attacks for Al-Queda.

You seemed to imply that the fizzled bombing attempt would cost the country billions. When pressed, you said 9/11 AND the underwear bomber TOGETHER cost the country billions. By that measure, one could say that 9/11 and Starbucks coffee have killed 3,000 people. But neither claim is good evidence that Starbucks coffee is dangerous, or that the underwear bomber has forced any significant change in air travel that is likely to have lasting effects on passengers, the industry, the economy, or the country.

[bubba_jr]

My 2 cents, take it for what its worth, and I’ll refund the 2 cents.

You go to the airport, and you check in, get your boarding pass. If you have no bags, you have to show NO ID. If you have bags or have a common name like me, the machine locks up and you have to show ID. Then they type and type and type and type. Which, has come out in the past couple of days, that you aren’t on the no-fly list, but… they said the airlines have no tie in to the “suspected” list.

Then you go to the checkpoint, the TSA monkey looks at your ID and your boarding pass, they have pretty flashlights and nice highlighters and a great database (maybe) that they are not checking your name against.

Go through security with a ceramic knife or some explosives taped to your junk, get on a plane and do your thing.

At NO TIME EVER in the airport does anybody ever check your ID and boarding pass to an actual government database, especially not the GOVERNMENT security monkeys. But they sure have fancy flashlights and some really nice highlighters and some high end clicky pens to circle stuff.

They rely on the airline check in folks to do all the work and they DO NOT have access to the full data base of freaks willing to blow shit up.

So now, and this isn’t hard to figure, say you are on the no-fly(blow shit up) list. You get yourself a stolen credit card with a nice normal name, check in at an automated check in (or print it out at home) with no bags, nobody checks your ID. To get through security, you use a photo shopped boarding pass and your real ID(THE TSA DOES NOT CHECK IT). Then pull out the real boarding pass, get on the plane and light your nuts on fire.

There are so many holes if you look that its not even funny. Keeping me from bringing a full size tube of toothpaste in my carry on does nothing but give me chuckles watching some lady get her $100 bottle of lotion confiscated, which is funny, yet sad at the same time.

[squeegee]

OK, update from me, the OP:

I flew today, and it was business as usual, no detectable changes that I saw, other than TSA looking really serious (and they did seem unusually diligent, fwiw) I did my usual, which was to carry as little as possible to security (my coat, my cell, a book, my ID and ticket). The last hour of my two flights was the same as any other last-hour I’ve been on, no rinky-dink stuff at all. Any international travelers here that can share their experience flying to an American destination this week?

And now back to our regularly scheduled show: “What makes Osama’s tummy all yummy when America does it?”

[Ravenman]

@Spoons

Yes, I’d say he and his friends are in their caves, laughing at their success. And all it cost them was a fanatical soldier and a small explosive.

See, but air travel hasn’t really been fundamentally changed by even 9/11. Yes, there is more security. Yes, it costs more, and the traveler pays for it with the security tax on each ticket. But the pattern of air travel seems to be governed more by the economy than by what’s going on in the world, with the one exception of 9/11. See table 5 of this pdf.

The rate of increase in airline passengers after 2002 is fairly constant, and about 1/3 more people are flying today than even in 2000.

We’ve had terrorism around airplanes for a long time: Lockerbie, the Rome shootings, all the way back to “take me to Cuba” hijackings. People still fly. If AQ thinks that failed bombings like this are going to make a dent in the way people travel, and they are actually laughing thinking that this was a big success, then they are deluded.

And it appears that within a week of the attack, air travel is pretty much humming along despite some minor delays. Face it, this attack is not likely to have any significant effects on us. Maybe a new security procedure or two, costing an extra minute or two during the check in and screening process, but nothing that is really going to make much of a difference one way or another.

[Ravenman]

@squeegee

Any international travelers here that can share their experience flying to an American destination this week?

I flew from Mexico to DC. There was no delay at the Mexican airport. There was additional screening of carryon bags at the gate. We were told to stay in our seats without personal items for the last 75 minutes of the flight.

Customs was no different. The connecting domestic flight was completely normal. This was on the 28th.

[fiddlesticks]

Absolutely no visible differences at Hartsfield-Jackson today or on my Airtran flight from ATL to San Antonio, TX. Oddly, on my pre-Christmas flight (12/18), my backpack set off something in the machine at SAT, and I got the dreaded patdown and my backpack was swabbed pretty thoroughly with the explosive detection thing-a-ma-jig. That’s never happened to me before. No such alarms at the Terminal T checkpoint in ATL today despite the fact that the backpack had almost the exact same contents, nor did I make any efforts to clean it during the past week. I have a suspicion that the machine at SAT actually detected something in backpack of the Air Force guy who which was in front of my pack on the belt.

[Uzi]

@Ravenman

You seemed to imply that the fizzled bombing attempt would cost the country billions. When pressed, you said 9/11 AND the underwear bomber TOGETHER cost the country billions. By that measure, one could say that 9/11 and Starbucks coffee have killed 3,000 people. But neither claim is good evidence that Starbucks coffee is dangerous, or that the underwear bomber has forced any significant change in air travel that is likely to have lasting effects on passengers, the industry, the economy, or the country.

It is pointless to argue with you. You seem to think the time waiting in line would have been time wasted otherwise. You think canceled flights cost no one anything.

We were told to stay in our seats without personal items for the last 75 minutes of the flight

I could be working on my laptop, reading a book, writing christmas cards (like the lady who was threatened to have them taken from her by a flight attendant on Air Canada) or just relaxing with a blanket instead. Just that alone cost all the people on that flight something. Multiply that by the amount of flights and people and you have a significant cost.

And, btw, did you even read the pdf you posted. It said that in the year following 9-11 total passenger traffic was down from 2001 to 2002 by 54 million passengers. It only went past the 2001 figure 3 years later. Multiply the 54 million by the cost of each ticket and you’ll get billions of dollars. Add in the ancillary spending that would have occurred at the destinations of these flights and it gets even worse.

[squeegee]

@Ravenman

I flew from Mexico to DC. There was no delay at the Mexican airport. There was additional screening of carryon bags at the gate. We were told to stay in our seats without personal items for the last 75 minutes of the flight.

Customs was no different. The connecting domestic flight was completely normal. This was on the 28th.

Thanks for the update! Can you elaborate on the “no personal items” bit? No paperbacks, anything? Just your hands in your lap staring at the seatback? At the 75 minute mark, did people need to stow personal items into the bins or seatbacks or…? Was the bathroom off-limits?

[Ravenman]

@squeegee

Thanks for the update! Can you elaborate on the “no personal items” bit? No paperbacks, anything? Just your hands in your lap staring at the seatback? At the 75 minute mark, did people need to stow personal items into the bins or seatbacks or…? Was the bathroom off-limits?

Yes to almost much all that, but we were asked to stash stuff in the overhead compartment. Most people within view (including myself) flipped blankly through the Sky Mall catalog and looked out the window. The flight attendant walked up and down the aisle a few times, looking at what we were doing.

People seemed cooperative, and I didn’t notice any groans, eye rolling, or dramatic exasperation when the announcement was made. This was on a regional jet sized aircraft.

I am unable to calculate how much money the economy lost on this flight due to people not being able to read their paperbacks or use their iPods for an additional 30 minutes (since personal electronic devices are always required to be stowed for the last 20-30 minutes of a flight anyway). I would put the cost to me at $7,000 to satisfy Uzi’s contention that these security measures are costing us all lots of money.

However, I feel benefited because it forced me to look at the Sky Mall catalog, and so I learned that they are now selling the most practical gift since the hot dog toaster. Ladies and gentlemen, how many times have you been scuba diving and really needed to make a phone call? Surface no more! I’m seriously pissed that I didn’t find out about this until AFTER Christmas. I’ve always wanted to call 911 when I’m endangered by a giant clam.

[tdn]

@wmfellows

Never mind European or American (or African or what not)

Bin laden or bin unladen?

[Common_sense_isn_t_so_common]

The issue is not a minute more here a minute more there of this 'n that security. It’s that many of us were already at the brink dealing with these numbnutted assholes and now to be made miserable on board as well - to be forced to sit with our thumbs up our asses for the last 60 or 70 minutes and stare out a window - I find that to be the height of absurdity.
Not everyone is a calm flyer. So called nervous flyers account for about 30 percent of the traveling population. Whether it’s a pill, or a water bottle or an iPod or gum, or the National Enquirer they use whatever’s handy to stay distracted and calm. I can’t imagine that this has not already been an anxiety-inducing event for many people over the last week.
More to the point, if you are ill or suffer various chronic health conditions, it’s unrealistic to expect that no one will need a rest room for an hour or more. And it will be more when you add in taxi way and jetway etc.
I can’t imagine how these flight attendants are going to enforce this.
Finally regarding the trashed $100 hand lotion - the saddest part of our hopelessly broken and embarrassingly awful security “system” is the colossal WASTE created daily – not just by the rules – but by flippant obnoxious uneducated TSA drones who toss your shit into the trash with utter glee. I’ve had everything from ice packs to peanut butter sandwiches (yes that was once a ‘gel’) tossed out with a flourish.
At Laguardia the lady even smiled as she dangled my $15 ice pack over the massive trash can. It was an “ice sheet” actually – little squares filled with ice about 12 inches by 8 inches. This item is somehow a threat to world stability?
I wonder how many truly impoverished folks, homeless people etc would give anything for all the water bottles, shampoo, lotions, perfumes, tooth paste, Cokes, lip gloss, yogurt, baby food and on and on that we as Americans so cavalierly throw away every day in these airports. It’s absolutely disgraceful.
So when you guys are done adding up all the billions lost in time, productivity etc - don’t forget the price of actual stuff - just going to the landfill.
I have even asked several times at security - can you at least donate this (whatever it was they were either trashing to stealing) to someone who needs it?
No they can’t of course. It’s against regulations. What a joke we have become.