Saturday, December 26, 2009

Airport Security, come fly with me?

I think that I might be done with airplanes. I have probably been on 40 flights in my lifetime, and never had any fear of flying. I flew on United airlines with my family from Las Vegas to Toronto a week before 9/11. Anytime I passed through airport security afterwards, I was willing, nay happy to endure any level or method of screening that diminished the probability of a terrorist successfully carrying out any comparable operation.

As time has progressed, new measures have been stacked on top of the original measures. When they started asking me to take off my shoes, I willingly took off my shoes. When they told me to leave my Pepsi at home, I left my Pepsi at home. I have been completely and totally compliant with every security measure that has been imposed on passengers to increase the probability they arrive alive. When they banned the fluids, even lip gloss or toothpaste, it made some sense but it did feel like an overreaction to something that never actually took place.

I read the new measures that are being imposed after this latest failed incident, and I am starting to ask the question of whether or not I would like to continue to travel this way. Where is this arms race of amateur terrorist and airport security evolving? What happens the first time some wacko decides to wear clothes made of explosives? Will that be the end of clothes on an airplane? Are we going to reach a stage where everyone just strips down to their birthday suits when they enter the airport?

My recommendation is that we remain at high alert in the event that this was a smaller component of a larger attack, but if it is determined to be an isolated incident, can these new measures be temporary? I have never had a single complaint regarding an airport security screener, but I don’t want a cavity search at the screening station AND the loading gate.  Maybe I'll try the train next time.

3 comments:

  1. I haven't traveled anywhere by plane since the new security measures came into place. It's not that I disagree with the measures, (although I believe a smaller corps of well trained and well paid security agents instead of the minimum wage staff now employed could eliminate the necessity for much of the overkill)it's just that I detest airports. I spent a goodly portion of my life in the air in my line of work. I hated airports then and I still hate them. I was like O.J. Simpson running through airports. They are understaffed, overpriced, cattle stockyards. Fortunately, my work kept me in Alberta for the last few years of my career. Now, when I choose to work it is only locally. I have great sympathy for those people for whom air travel is a necessity. Now, on vacations, I opt to drive. However, I haven't yet figured out how to get to Europe unless I take a ship like I do to the Caribbean.

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  2. How about the pig-headed leftist "religion of peace" apologists abandon their politically correct denial of the bleeding obvious and we start PROFILING efficiently in airports. It's become a cliché but I still would prefer seeing an oriental grandma than a young middle eastern man getting on the same flight as me. Call me a racist if you want. If I land alive, I'll get over it.

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  3. Having flown a fair amount what with living in Indonesia and Kenya for several years and working in several other countries as well as having to fly most everywhere as a matter of efficient travel I have come to the conclusion that the security aspect of what we are subjected to as passengers is a placebo. It is designed to convince us that something is being done and the more tedious and aggravating they make it the more effective we are supposed to think it is (sort of like that Buckley's cough syrup ad). The real security breaches occur not with passengers but in access to planes and luggage handling so as I watch unskilled people assume a mantle of 'authority' and enjoy their 'power' over those of us reduced to cattle I recognize it is to no real avail other than to convince some that security is being taken seriously - after all what security personnel are identified as being responsible, fired and charged for enabling, through ineptness, this latest attempt?

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