Or maybe McCain will win the primary. I hear he’s a bit of a maverick, he probably wouldn’t stand for this shit.
If you can take down an airplane with a pair of nailclippers, the world is yours.
Miyagi-san speaks the truth.
Does the clipper have one of those little one-inch blades that apparently have no other purpose than to sever the spines of pilots, or is it just the plain old clipper?
High time we had a thread on this.
PS JER-RY JER-RY JER-RY
do I suck at math or 866/GA-SECURE isn’t a proper 10 digits phone number.
It just drops the last number when you dial it.
A better number would be 866/GA-SECURITY-THEATER, and they would both go to the same place.
Heh, our worst airports for “pilferage” in the system are now the US airports. Giving TSA carte blanche to rifle through checked in bags (bags can’t be locked, or must have TSA openable locks) was correlated to the jump in pilferage. Of cause, not causation, because they don’t do that…
Best designed high security airport system I go through is Frankfurt & Munich, they’ve been doing it since early 70’s (baader-meinhof & PLO attacks) It’s thorough, efficient, and humane. (for example, people requiring a body pat down are pulled aside into separate m/f channels that are screened off. And the pat downs are thorough, “gaol visitor” quality level, i.e. checking small of your back for taped on objects, check inside top of your trousers for garotte wire, about as good as you can do without strip search)
So, where was I? Oh yes. TSA are annoying. They also outsource their uselessness on others - the IT changes we have had to put in place, at short notice, to cope with their ever changing data requests are legion. They’ve now moved goalposts once more, wanting “final list” 72 hours before departure. We haven’t even opened check in that early…
Interior crocodile alligator. TSA se-curity ah the-ater!
Thanks to JetBlue All You Can Jet this month, I’ve got 4 weeks of TSA harassment to look forward to. Fortunately I’ve got a few rules of thumb that generally let me sail through the checkpoints:
- Wear a local police department t-shirt to the airport. (It helps that I kind of look like a cop)
- carry all my electronics in a separate bag that can fit in my main bag once I’m through security (getting my luggage eviscerated when carrying two laptops, a CPAP, and 8 gaming handhelds for work once was enough to teach me that)
- Don’t wear anything with San Francisco Giants logos on it anywhere when flying through any Los Angeles area airport. (I got my luggage eviscerated again, plus having some of my items swabbed for explosives)
You carry the CPAP? I’ve always just put mine in my checked bag. I know they say to carry it, but it just doesn’t seem like it’s worth the hassle to devote that much carry on space to the mask and machine and cords and hoses etc etc. I’ve never gotten any crap for having it in a checked bag.
“Why were you in China?” asked the passport control officer, a woman with the appearance and disposition of a prison matron.
“None of your business,” I said.
Her eyes widened in disbelief.
“Excuse me?” she asked.
All of the TSA rules at this point are a complete joke. Indeed, virtually all of the rules for the entire process of flying are a joke. They reek of rules created by bureaucrats, without any understanding of underlying rationale.
For instance… when a plane lands, you’re allowed to use your cell phone, but not any other electronics equipment. There’s no rationale for this… I could use my smartphone, but not my mp3 player… despite the fact that my smartphone has all of the same electronics inside as the mp3 player, plus more.
All of the rules are meant to give a false sense of security to people… because, surely, if normal law-abiding citizens are hasseled so much, terrorists could never accomplish their goals, M I RITE??
Citation please? Every plane I’ve been on the phrase was “electronic devices”.
I managed the operations of an airline in a high risk environment for almost five years (Indonesia) For much of the visible security - yes it was partly PR exercise to assure passengers we were doing something, but mostly deterrent.
The nice thing about the AQ group is that they tend to be very professional (certainly, the Indonesian franchise were) Their planning and reconnaisance was meticulous. The first Bali bomb for example was twisted genius.
If they wanted to bomb my specific airline, they could have. The job of the security we had in place wasn’t to find bombs or stop terrorists, it was to be visible (and random) enough that a rational observer would decide to go after another target (even if just the airline next door to us) because our checks were an additional layer of risk they would have to run for a successful operation.
(My wife was actually present at one of the hotel bombings - she was unhurt luckily. So for me it certainly wasn’t bureaucratic rule making - I take this stuff to heart)
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That rule, I believe, is because they want everyone ready to listen to orders from the crew or the PA in the event your plane slams into the ground and skids to a top in a ball of fire. If you had your music on you wouldn’t know to scream, panic, and try to flee the plane with your broken legs (from them slamming into the hard bar at the back-bottom of the seat in front of you).
Yep, there’s a pilots’ saying “every line in the manual is written in blood”.
Example is raising all the window blinds, even for a night landing or takeoff. There have been cases where spatial disorientation caused a lost few seconds, and so more death. Another is the fact that cabin crew are trained to engender a certain level of panic for evacuations. It causes a few extra broken bones/ bruises, but there was once a flight that had a large group of (Swiss) doctors. Most died, the investigation showed that they were too calm and orderly, and the smoke got them before they got out of the aircraft.
Flying is an intensely procedure driven industry. Every bolt in an aircraft has a record and a history back to its manufacture, just about every action has a check list that is drilled until it is “muscle memory”.
REPORTED.
So thrilling!