<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Mountain Trader:
SF Joe-
Bottom lise is, I don't buy your argument, which seems to be that since they can't stop everything that could be a threat, they are foolish to stop things such as your cigar cutter.
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Nope. They are foolish to stop things which are no more dangerous than bare hands. Frankly, I think there is a decent argument that if every Bruno had a small knife, he'd be more effective and wouldn't get into the cabin anyway. But leaving that aside, I think there is no good reason for taking away things that actually aren't good weapons.
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And I sure don't buy the case for relying on Bruno across the aisle to jump up and stop a hijacking. Many of the Brunos I've seen don't know what is meant by "Put your seat in the upright position".
Never a Bruno around when you need one.
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I vote that we all give them the most support we can-if they want me to go to the airport 3 hours early, that's ok, even if I have to wait around for 2.5 hours of that. I can handle that, read a book, take a breath, hope for the future. How about you give up the cigar cutter with a little less indignation?
Nope. This one works fine for occasional vacation travel, but it doesn't work as a long-term solution for this economy, nor for the weak airlines. I frequently take multiple flights during a day, and the day isn't long enough to chill 3 hours before each one. My employer doesn't shell out the bucks for me to read books in airports, either.
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They're making mistakes, and they will make many more. But hopefully they won't make the mistake of doing nothing, which is the mistake they made that led to 9/11. No system will ever be 100% safe, and any attempt to improve safety will necessarily take away some comfort from innocent bystanders.
At the heart of our disagreement is that I will welcome that, while it seems you'll still be annoyed.
Nope, again. I don't welcome inconvenience for its own sake. It doesn't make me feel better that they've found some irrelevant variables to control. The security folks should be concentrating on things that actually matter, not on BS feelgoods. If the lines are too long, hire some more screeners and buy some more machines. But I don't have a few hundred extra hours a year to spend in airports, and neither do most FFs, I suspect.
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