A couple of weeks back I went to NYC and left from the Oakland Airport on JetBlue. The secuity line (shown below) was so long that I couldn’t even begin to capture on a picture. It streamed from the cattle corral all the way through the airport, past the entire baggage claim area and into the street. It was a half hour or more to get from the end to the security scanners. When I returned from NYC I walked past the same area and there was virtually nobody there. How come they cannot normalize this process? They know how many flights are coming and going. They see this pattern in advance. For the passenger it’s a total crapshoot. It’s ruining the travel experience. Or I should say it’s been ruined. And if they are confident enough to shoot passengers for trying to get off the plane as in Miami, then they can’t be confident in their ability to find anything at these checkpoints.
Line out the door
Meanwhile, Oakland has a display showing things you cannot bring onto the plane. Some of this is obvious. A gallon can of gasoline? How dumb do they think people are that they need to display this? “What? I thought I could bring gasoline on the plane!” Treat the public like idiots and they’ll act like idiots to oblige.
But then there was this: Scrubbing bubbles mildew remover. Why is this a verboten item? They don’t want anyone cleaning the bathrooms? I mean I cannot figure out why anyone would take such a thing in their suitcase, but how is it so dangerous? This is nuts.
Treat the public like idiots and they’ll act like idiots to oblige.
WRONG!!!!
I worked airport maintaince before 9/11 1996 to be exact. You would not BELIEVE what people wanted to bring on board. Cleaning out a garbage can I found an old machine gun clip (no bullets). My boss told me it was over 50 years old but…well…..HOW DID IT GET THERE??? And these were the cans for folks getting OFF planes…… Yes folks, Americans ARE that stupid.
Last month returning to the US from Buenos Aires, I had a connecting flight in Sao Paulo Guarulhos Aiport. Security in Guarulhos was requiring all incoming flights (not just our plane) carry on bags to be X rayed before you enter the terminal !! The line was monumentally long and slow due to only 1 x ray machine. After 1 hour another guy and me walked to the front (found we had slugged 1/3) looking for assistance and to see what the hell was going on. After nearly being accosted by irate passengers we were led near the side of the x ray machine by a very nice looking Varig employee (f) who promptly abandoned us there, thereby leaving us to explain to fuming passengers and various airport staff what we were doing there. Got thru, but I suggest you fly direct.
Airplane Secuirty is a myth plain and simple.
Bomb sniffing dogs. Bomb Squad. Immigration screening, customs screening, international screening, domestic screening.
Any air traveller with half a brain can tell airline secuirty is an illusion. Cigarette lighters not allowed on planes cause they can be used to light sneaker bombs, which means they can’t detect sneaker bombs.
Matches aren’t, because they can’t detect them, which can also be used to light sneaker bombs.
Take a cd rom, wrap it in a dish towel, place it on the edge of a sink, snap it in half, if you get a clean cut, you’ve got two blades with two edges each you can thrust into 4 throats.
But hey shooting a missionary with a disease will scare terrorists. “Our system is working”
Yeah because a terrorist is really going to throw a fit and run around erractically drawing attention to himself instead of wait until the flight is in the air and detonate the bomb in his luggage.
Coming home from LAX a few months ago, the security line was short, but chock full of idiots. First there was the man who was trying to wheel an entire rental cart of luggage through the zig-zagged “rat maze”. Security officers were telling him he had to check his luggage, but he didn’t seem to understand English
Then there was the woman right in front of me who threw a bic lighter in the X-Ray tray while standing next to a sign saying “Lighters forbidden” with a trash can full of lighters underneath it. I expressly told her that she couldn’t take the lighter, because I didn’t want her holding up the line.
Finally, there was a woman three or four people in front of me wearing the most godawful belt you could wear when traveling. The belt was made of little two-inch long patches of leather that were *riveted” together. She couldn’t get the belt off because every time she would pull it two inches, at least one of the links would get caught on one of the belt loops on her pants. I tried not to laugh while a big burly security guard helped pull one end while she pushed the other.
At least it was funny.
> Scrubbing bubbles mildew remover. Why is this a verboten
> item? They don’t want anyone cleaning the bathrooms? I
> mean I cannot figure out why anyone would take such a
> thing in their suitcase, but how is it so dangerous? This
> is nuts.
Those cleaning chemicals are classified as hazardous materials, so they’re forbidden. Why are they “hazardous”? Well, I spilled some bleach in a moving truck one time and it ate away at furniture underneath. If you mix an acid (vinegar) and a base (bleach), you can get a toxic cloud or with a stronger combination, an explosion.
I agree that a lot of the security measures are imperfect (to be nice), but that being said, I’m glad they’re trying (and hopefully getting better/smarter about things).
As to the checkpoints, I wish they would be more intelligent about them. As the stat people say, everyone in a neighborhood doesn’t have to have an alarm to deter burglars. What percentage of homes need to be protected for deterence? Or in our case, what percentage of people have to be searched before a bomber would not think its worth the chance… I don’t know, but it doesn’t need to be everybody.
Oh yea, I forget to comment. Most of the American public are not idiots, but even if 1% of the population is, that’s a whole lot of people, some of whom fly.
And as to the other 99%, clear thinking is not their strong point among most of them, Remember, many of the problems we suffer, the taxes we pay, etc. is because people make stupid decisions (or at least ones without thinking of the long term consequences). Examples:
* No unprotected sex? The AIDS and abortion issues basically go away.
* Following a minimully heathy lifestyle (ie: no smoking, limiting crap food, some exercise) – lots of health care issues go away
* Saving money instead of conspicuously spending it (and using borrowed moneys): the social security – retirement issue is greatly minimized
Looking at the above, to me it seems that bringing drain cleaner on a plane to your vacation house, because you have an extra bottle in your regular house, doesn’t seem especially out of line reasoning for our people.
I used to think like jon when I saw something like that display. But I have since learned that most of those thing came from actual air travellers. People are that dumb!
Even though it’s fun to make fun of regulations we find absurd, they are necessary. Regarding the bathroom cleaners, remember that ammonia plus bleach yields chlorine gas. Even small amounts can hurt people. You wouldn’t want that in an enclosed aircraft cabin.
Lou, good points, but if those things were stopped, the US economy’d go bye bye, wouldn’t it?
Also, the media & politicians push consumption. If the public got smart, they’d make less money. Sounds pretty ridiculous.
The USA was much better off when it made products. A country based on service sector jobs & a “knowledge” based economy is nonsense, & the politicians know it. Once the housing bubble goes, what smoke & mirrors will they create next?
Both the mildew remover and the liquid plumber contain Sodium Hydroxide (NaOH) this chemical will attack Aluminum (releasing Hydrogen). As large parts of aircraft are made from Aluminum you can see why they dont want the in the cabin or the hold for that matter.
Remember the security lines after the January 2004 CES? Now those were some lines!
Airport security is a sham. Those random searches? Well, the computer may randomly pick them but they also print SSSSS on your boarding pass to tell the security people to search you. How is it security if you know you are going to get searched before you even get to the metal detector?
Then once you get through security, there are all sorts of resteraunts in the terminal. So none of those resteraunts or bars have knives or toxic chemicals? All of their food deliveries gets searched so that nothing could get smuggled in? Terrorists can’t make friends with people who work at or get jobs at resteraunts in airports? Seems awfull unlikely…
Once again, just recently, my (duffel) bag came to luggage pickup with the zippers only half zipped up. This has happened more times than I can count but THIS TIME some things were missing. ( A pair of jeans and goodness-knows-what valued at who-knows-what. )
So I wrote a well thought out letter to the FTA complaint division. What a waste of time! They gave me such a run-around that I gave up.
One TSA officer told me that removing shoes is voluntary, but if you do not remove your sneakers then you will be set aside for extra security.
Hazardous chemicals should not be allowed onto aircraft. That includes most of the items shown. This is a safety issue to prevent harm from accidents.
The other issue raised is security. Security is people caused. Like most people, I too wondered how many hijackings have ever taken place using nail clippers. If I wanted to have a weapon on board an aircraft, I too could find several items that might be easily converted.
The whole problem has more to do with removing civil rights then preventing any terror attack. Some even consider it treasonous to criticize the President or FEMA. It is possible that soon we won’t be able to.
Article printed in the Oregonian, titled “Shooting prompts security questions”
Friday, December 09, 2005
by NICOLE GAOUETTE
and MAURA REYNOLDS
Two paragraphs struck me as interesting:
“There are, unfortunately, probably every day in America law enforcement shootings, but there are procedures that should be followed afterward,” said Rep. Peter A. DeFazio, D-Ore., a member of the House Homeland Security committee. “We will wait for that to happen and we will not prejudge the situation.”
and
DeFazio said the shooting should prompt reassessment of screening procedures and equipment that he called outdated. “We’re running passenger checkpoints for carry-on bags that are incapable of finding plastic explosives,” DeFazio said by telephone from an airport where he was waiting for a flight. “The kind of X-rays they’re using were thrown out of the Capitol years ago because they weren’t able to catch anything.”
So, a member of the House Homeland Security committee believes that airport x-ray machines are useless – and he has known this for years???
Nice. 🙂
I hear a lot of complaints but your not suggesting how to solve the problem. Anyone can say, just optimize it, but if i asked you to optimize your speaking schedule for the next 5 years based on what you expect to happen over those years, I don’t think you’d be able to do it.
They don’t allow some of these apparently harmless chemicals onboard because of what they could potentially do in COMBINATION.
It’s should be embarassing enough for you that you pretend to know about technology and which direction it’s going and are consistently proven wrong.
now you’re going to pretend to be a chemist too?
mixing common household cleaning solutions can create toxic fumes, enough to wipe out everyone in a small, confined space like.. an airplane.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/classic/A795611
The bend of hazardour chemical is basically useless. A terriorst can have numbers of way to create it from scratch just using basic stuff on the fright. A bomb can be as simply as electrolyte water. Battery and wire can eaily set up to light it up. ( No lighter need) Cell phone can easily be setup as a remote control. …… There is a lot more thing can harm people in a small cabinet. So to avoid that, take the ground.and no more fright.
i see that security are doing there job but passengers are so stupid they’ll put anything on the plain to harm others.. Due to this reason i do not fly unless i need to go to see family or other reletives. They should not bring anything harmfull on the plain period.