I've mentioned it many times:
Focus on real threats. Every item that is prohibited requires time and resources to keep it from getting on the plane or into the terminal. For every person/dollar we waste keeping cricket bats, pool cues and pocket knives out, we open ourselves to real threats elsewhere.
Stop randomly harassing passengers. It's not the current passengers' fault that 11 Sept happened. Rely on/improve the x-ray and magnetometer instead of harassing passengers who do not beep and whose luggage appears to be fine on the x-ray. Concentrate on keeping out the real threats like guns and bombs and people might even start flying again.
Stop clearing terminals on a whim. If someone might have gotten through with a knife, GIVE IT A MISS and let it go. The probability that the person with the knife is both a terrorist and could hijack a plane with it is so small that one should be buying asteroid insurance ahead of clearing a terminal to combat this 'threat'.
I am not advocating elimination of all security for all you TSA apologists. We need to take a good look at what constitutes a credible threat and what does not and then focus our efforts on real threats and not on stupid threats like pool cues. Hell, any object has a non-zero probability of being a credible weapon to hijack a plane. However, most of the items on the sacred prohibited list have probabilities that barely register, especially when compared with real threats.
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by benoit:
To me the most interesting aspect of the article, is that it did not make a single constructive suggestion about how to make flying safer. If the federal agency is doing a poor job of making flying safer, what should it be do differently? Spiff?</font>
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"Give me Liberty or give me Death." - Patrick Henry