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The New York Times is reporting that the crackdown on passengers, in the name of security, has quickly gone draconian:
“On Sunday, passengers on an Air France flight to John F. Kennedy Airport in New York confirmed that they were screened twice, once by stepping through the usual metal detectors and once by hand-held wands or pat-downs. Dmitry Shaferov, a passenger on the flight, said that the extra scrutiny delayed the plane’s departure from Charles de Gaulle Airport by an hour.
Flo Stmzelruyk, a flight attendant on that trip, said the crew also barred passengers from standing, using the bathroom or even touching their baggage. She said she was surprised by how the passengers obeyed the new procedures without complaining.”
CLICK ON THE BOX TO GO TO THE TIMES ARTICLE
One of the big problems with the whole security scare/crackdown that has been going on in stages since 9-11 is the way the rules are applied by the time they get down to the people at the airport enforcing them. For years, the official rules said taking off your shoes was optional, depending on the judgment of the TSA screener. They almost always demanded that a passengers remove his or her shoes, even when wearing thin soled shoes that could not contain anything of danger because of the lack of volume. Finally, after successive scares came along in the wake of the “shoe bomber”, the rule was changed: everyone take your shoes off.
The whole thing, along with restrictions on liquids, made little or no sense either way, since it would be very, very difficult, according to scientists and chemists, to make a bomb from household liquids while on an airliner. But, these things don’t have to make sense, do they?, since what is really being responded to is the fear of passengers, not actual threats. The purpose, beyond all others, is obviously to make people believe everything is being done, so that people won’t be afraid to fly. In the process, they are making people afraid to fly or at least reluctant to go to the airport and be treated as though they are checking in for a few years in prison.
Flying over all is down around 20% since 2008 and that is not all due to the recession. Over time, it is certainly true that people get used to the “security procedures” and tend to resist, or resent, them less. How many people have, however, simply done everything possible to avoid flying simply because they believe the whole process is an insult to their dignity and to their citizenship? We will never know, since, by all indications, no one is even attempting to track these figures or, if they are, they are keeping them private.
When you combine the security mess with jam packed airliners and often snarly, snarky flight attendants, who would want to fly for anything other than absolute necessity? Casual travelers who might make two or three flights a year, I would wager, are bothered a lot less by the whole mess than frequent business travelers, the people who make up the bulk of the revenue for airlines because they often pay higher fares and travel much more often.
Someone in the government and at the airlines should remember that no one other than one pathetic young adult from Nigeria was involved, as far as we know, in the events over Detroit. 99.999999 per cent of all passengers are simply trying to get from point A to point B to conduct their business, family and personal matters. Treating everyone like a criminal tends to obscure the fact that the biggest failure, so far as we know, was simply letting this guy on the plane in the first place, since he was on the terror watch list. (Hey, that’s a really useful tool, isn’t it? Thousands of innocent people get flagged and the real deal gets waved onboard.) If the Obama Administration has any guts, heads should be rolling in a few days over the failure to stop someone already named as a potential terrorist. This is the same failure that Clinton and Bush jointly allowed in the run up to 9-11. The very same failure, eight years and two wars later.
Here is a key question going forward: how long with these measures be in effect and, two, are the airlines going to over do it, as suggested in the paragraph from the Times above? If experience is any guide, it will take six months to a year for the measures to be relaxed at all and some of them are likely to be here to stay, permanently.
Good luck, America, your “up in the air” experience just got another major downgrade.
Doug Terry, 12.27.09
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