It's all about scale my friend.
Friends have told me security screening takes 3 hours in Isreal and every single airport has military personnel with M16s (or some similar military firearm). If you think people like Spiff are complaining now about the likes of Loy and the TSA for what we're doing now, imagine what it would be like if we instituted the kind of security that really would stop all kinds of terrorism. The passenger downturn the airlines talked about from before would be a joke compared to what it would be like under those circumstances.

I am not calling Isreali airline security good or bad. I am just saying that on the scale of OUR airline industry (thousands of jet aircraft versus El Al's, what, 30? Many more daily passengers), it wouldn't even be reasonable to compare ourselves to them. I have heard from people that've asked the question, "El Al's security record is practically flawless, how come we can't be like them?" Well, beyond the previous two things I mentioned, it would also be cost-prohibitive.

Remember the Anti-SAM discussion (that's still on going). Again, with 30 airliners, you can afford to spend the money on the flares or whatever that misguide shoulder-to-air missile weaponry. But American Airlines alone operates something like 800 airplanes regularly with maybe 200 more parked in the desert I think. It just isn't reasonable.

The truth of the matter is, we need better airport parameter security instead of wasting time and money on the great pointy object search. I'm not as big a vocal protestor of the TSA as a lot of people but it just simply isn't worth my time or energy complaining about a process that costs me very little time and effort to comply with. I am through security in litterally one minute. So I'm not complaining about the inconvenience. I do however have a problem with the misappropriation of tax payer dollars with this thing.

The TSA is no better than the private security companies were, only now, they aren't at least they aren't using what appeared to be the GAIN (welfare-to-work) program or the Senior Citizen Volunteer Pool for screeners. But they're still not up to par on the bomb detection issue, the multimillion dollar CTX machines I've been told aren't as good as some of the other devices now available, and, X-Rays can be tricked.

I realize they hand search bags when they can't be sure of what they're seeing but it seems to be quite random. Because I've very densely packed my bags before and I routinely expect to be searched because I couldn't tell you what was in there if I was able to see through the luggage, heh.

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Best regards,
Dairenn Lombard
Los Angeles, CA