Hi, relative newbie here who's been on a couple of international flights since 9/11.

We have a problem.

The problem is, we're trying to close the barn door after the entire herd has sashayed out.

The failures of 9/11 were multiple, and on multiple levels. OTOH, the system was simply not designed for the threat it faced. It was a cheap, mostly facade effort that was more oriented towards stopping illegal drug shipments and perhaps pure explosives. It was never designed to face the problem the terrorists posed. Understand that the problems extended far beyond the weapons that were smuggled on board the aircraft.

Unfortunately, we are now overreacting. What's worse, we're doing so in the wrong direction. Does anyone seriously think that nail clippers are a deadly weapon? Seriously? Can you imagine someone leaping to their feet and trying to hold anyone hostage with a nail clipper or a metal comb? I mean, theoretically these things can be weapons, but so can about 900 other things we carry with us on a day to day basis. You can do more damage faster with a simple house key. You could grab an unopened can of diet coke and use it as a blunt object weapon. Short of putting us all in human sized cigar tube containers you're not going to truly eliminate all the possible weapons out there. We are far too inventive a species for that to work. Pens, Pencils Watches, belt buckles, shoelaces.. the list goes on and on. And that's not including the many items already on board the aircraft.

It's truly counter-productive to spend any time or effort on nail clippers or combs. It's not only wasted effort, it makes the travel process so inconvenient for the 99.999999% perfectly normal customers that they simply won't bother flying if they can avoid it.

The point is that we are not focusing on the right problems. We're clamping in down in a way that grants far too much authority to the wrong people and doesn't secure us in any meaningful way. We need to get the administration of the airlines and the security companies to focus on what is truly important.

Some simple commonsense reccomendations:

1) Ground crews must be rotated on a truly *random* basis. Both in terms of the craft they service AND the teams they are on.

Doing so is the simplest most effective way of minimizing the ability to smuggle items on-board. It makes it much harder for a inside job to work. If you don't know *exactly* who you're working with *and* what aircraft you're working on there's no way to ensure you can smuggle things on board.

2) Offer a reward for whistle-blowing. Corporate thanks isn't enough. If you spot someone doing something suspicious it should be worth 50000 dollars cash to report it. If it turns out to be nothing you get a Steakhouse dinner certificate or something similar for keeping your eyes open and coming forward. If it turns out to be something more serious, then indeed, 50K is a pittance compared to the cost of a lost or damaged aircraft and the lawsuits. In all cases it should be confidential.

In ANY case of a report a second team will come in and duplicate what the first plane crew did, down to checking every seatback etc. The delay is worth it. Period.

3) Random security inspections of aircraft after servicing and before boarding. Truly random and more than a quick walkthrough, a five person team (rotated among three different teams) is handed a sheet in the morning and inspects listed aircraft after service and before departure. Five people should be enough to do a reasonably thorough pat-down of the aircraft in fifteen or so minutes. Again, team memebers are rotated and the schedule is random. Any aircraft picked for search is immune from being counted in the OnTime percentile and gets priority in the take-off queue so as not to be punished for being selected.

4) Random shifting of a few passengers (particularly in first or business) from their seats to other seats within their class. This applies especially to males or foreign nationals travelling together.

To be fair this would probably mean that myself and one of my teammates might be moved around a bit. Oh well.

It's important to remember that these attacks ALL occured from First/Business class.

Therefore the closer you get to the front of the plane the more likely you are to be moved from your initially assigned seat to another one (again, within the class).
There is no way for your ground crew confederate to know which seat you will be in, and so they will have to take the enormous risk of trying to plant a weapon under every seat, AND hoping they get assigned the right aircraft to do so AND happen to be working with someone else who is either in on it or not caring about making 50K cash.

5)Retinal identification of every employee on the tarmac everytime they come to work. It is ridiculous to talk about eye scanning passengers and NOT eye scan every single employee out there.

6) Police officers at EVERY major check-point. National Guardsmen are (with respect) by and large useless unless the need is for heavy duty firepower. They're not trained in the law and don't know how to deal with the public. That seems condescending, but when you have Nat Guardsmen trying to arrest or bar people form aircraft because of a book they're reading... That makes the point. you need someone with a criminal justice degree who knows the law. Not someone with a gun and a new sense of power. It also takes the baloney factor down to zero when you have someone right there with the power of arrest. We have at least as much security in our courtrooms.

6) A refined, realistic list of allowed items on carry on luggage. Enough of the no nail clippers nonsense. It's stupid and trivializes the whole security process to be told you can't bring a nail file or a sewing kit or other innocuous item on board. It is a hyper-childish scared response to a bogeyman. People tend to respond with disdain, and lose respect for the process. You have to wonder if they're going to ban pop rocks next since I hear you can make someone eat pop rocks and drink cherry coke and their head will explode.

7) Why not LOCKED carry on bins. How often do you really access your stuff overhead during flight anyways? This would be a very cost effective and straightforward implementation. The FA's can unlock it if you need them to do so, (Perhaps to get the baby's diapers or some medicine) but they can't unlock more than one (or possibly) two bins at a time.

This allows those of us with work laptops or carry on materials to still carry what we (in some cases) *have* to carry whiile minimizing risk to passengers in general. The handgun you "forgot" about is LOCKED away. The current mood is a lot of inquisitive looks if you so much as go to the bin for another paperback, I can imagine the response when you oopsy find your gun.

8) Requirement by law that foreign nationals in the US have paperwork on them at ALL times, and ALL such paperwork to be verified before they are allowed on flights. This is more problematic and really out of the hands of the airlines. We should require on a Drivers license or any other State/US Gov't issued ID an indication that the person is a foreign national. They should reasonably be required to carry passports with them on all trips within the US on airlines. Failure to have an active visa/passport AND US issued ID would bar them from boarding the aircraft.

(This may seem a bit racial or profiling, but please remember, none of the 9/11 terrorists were US citizens. I have to show my passport when I want to go from one EU nation to the next because I'm not an EU national. Fair is fair)

9) finally and most importantly we MUST begin revamping our system to a more european model. They have learned the hard way how to do things right (or as right as can be done without bankrupting the airlines). It would be terribly stupid of us to ignore the lessons they have learned.

My long winded .02 cents.

Regards,
-Bouncer-
(edit: for spelling)


[This message has been edited by Bouncer (edited 11-04-2001).]