Originally Posted by exbayern (Post 16122401)

Canadian (well, not exclusive to Canada - it is originally from Australia) shoe care - several versions in liquid form. http://www.kiwicare.com/FR-CA/Products/Leather/

Originally Posted by mad1 (Post 16117300)

But, to me, an airport is a bad bad place to be seen trying to conceal something - anything. And it's the concealment that's what made me speak up.

Originally Posted by dand99 (Post 16120139)

You're seriously suggesting we can rely on other passengers to save the day when a terrorist is on board with a weapon ? How many times has this happened as compared to the number of successful attacks ?

Originally Posted by CDTraveler (Post 16121365)

But, it could just as easily be something else not so harmless that might have been detected by examination.

Originally Posted by N965VJ (Post 16123182)

Most recent incident prior to 9/11: PAX breaks down the cockpit door of a WN flight in August 2000. He is restrained with such force that he eventually dies of his injuries. Several PAX suffer injuries while trying to subdue him.

On 9/11 the PAX fought back, preventing the hijackers from reaching their intended target.

Most recent to date: NW 253 Underpants Bomber is dragged through the cabin with his pants around his ankles (NOT the outcome he was hoping for :D) Several PAX suffer burns while subduing him.

Originally Posted by PhlyingRPh (Post 16123342)

^

I don't like people watching me like hawks when I get up to to the lavatory, but I know that if I were to start banging on the cockpit door or yelling something stupid about wanting to open the cockpit door, I'd have about twenty people all up my, I mean, in my face within ten seconds flat. You can't check for propensity to do stuff like that at any checkpoint, no matter how thorough you check people, and I don't think one wants to predict behaviour.

Passengers really are the last and most effective line of defence against morons, because they don't care that you walked through the checkpoint with shinola in your pocket, but they will spring into action if you are trying to do something idiotic that will hurt them. Even though the number of incidents have been miniscule, like under ten in ten years of millions of flights a year, each time someone has tried to light a shoe, it's the other passengers that have done what was necessary.

Originally Posted by N965VJ (Post 16123182)

<<< TSA Artful Concealer Silver :p





Most recent incident prior to 9/11: PAX breaks down the cockpit door of a WN flight in August 2000. He is restrained with such force that he eventually dies of his injuries. Several PAX suffer injuries while trying to subdue him.

On 9/11 the PAX on UA 93 fought back, preventing the hijackers from reaching their intended target.

Most recent to date: NW 253 Underpants Bomber is dragged through the cabin with his pants around his ankles (NOT the outcome he was hoping for :D) Several PAX suffer burns while subduing him.

Originally Posted by Wimpie (Post 16112152)

^
Would you have turned him into security at the mall?
At a restaurant?
Walking down the street?

It wasn't a Freaking GUN!
What were you thinking?

Originally Posted by dand99 (Post 16117784)

One in a thousand (or fewer) false alarms may lead to bad things happening to good people. What about the times when wary (or nosy...) civilians saved the day ? I'm sure there are just as many of those.

Originally Posted by Silver Fox (Post 16123542)

I have told you a thousand times that you would get found out one day y going to those sorts of clubs :D

Originally Posted by CDTraveler (Post 16121365)

....What I was addressing was the suspect behavior of the pax hiding the bottle. By concealing it, he was preventing it from being examined by any means at all. You are willing to assume that someone who does something which is clearly a violation of security regulations has a benign motivation such as protecting his own property which he wishes to take on board the aircraft even though said property may violate airline or security rules. Maybe the guy has a shiny shoe fetish and maybe it really was just an oversized bottle of shoe polish. But, it could just as easily be something else not so harmless that might have been detected by examination. Shoe polish is usually dark colored, what if the contents of the bottle weren't the right color and that could have been detected by visual examination? I'm in the medical field and have been reading lately about some of the possible biological weapons; using one of those in a shoe polish sized bottle, you could easily kill off most of the pax on a large plane.

Just because many people on FT find it acceptable to circumvent security for their own personal reasons doesn't mean that those who consider such behavior to be dangerous to the general welfare are paranoid. Ad hominem attacks are usually used by those who know that their own argument is either weak or irrelevant, like making an analogy between having a heart attack and observing someone trying to smuggle something illicit through security.

Originally Posted by bocastephen (Post 16126005)

You're missing one point - how does running a liquid or gel through an x-ray identify the chemical composition of the contents?

Hopefully you're not like some of our scientifically-challenged screeners who think you can detect a chemical explosive by running a container through an x-ray machine.

Biological weapons? You think the TSA has even a snowflake's chance in hell of finding a biological weapon? Guess what - when the time comes for terrorists to try that route, the delivery system won't be a bottle in someone's pocket - it will be a passenger spreading the contagion on a flight, and those passengers spreading it further...and so on and so on.

I regularly sneak small bottles through the checkpoint hidden in my pocket and within my bag - for years I've been a professional-grade 'artful concealer' and I'm proud of it.

Originally Posted by KurtD (Post 16125304)

Liquid bombs require a much larger volume of liquid, and mixing them in an airplane is not feasible because the mixture releases noxious fumes which tend to kill the mixer unless they have a mask AND the mixture tends to burst into flames prematurely unless the proportions and mixing technique are perfect. In other words, the whole idea of terrorists mixing liquids in an airplane in order to bring it down is absurd..

Originally Posted by dand99 (Post 16127052)

So, are you an explosives expert ?

Because they have demonstrated the exact opposite of what you claim.

Originally Posted by PhlyingRPh (Post 16121831)

Nope.


Nope.


Of course it's not proof, but it's a reasonable conclusion to draw based on what we do know. May I ask what proof do you have of your assertion below...



I base my educated and intellectual guess on the fact that every minor and insignificant security alert is presented as a win in this broad war of terror you are fighting. To date, after ten years of this, I can think of hundreds of formal complaints of unnecessary security alerts resulting from dumbasses seeing someone they think is suspicious that I have been privy to, and possibly thousands discussed in various live and online forums or listed on the websites of various civil rights groups. Add to this my own experiences and those of others I know of who are who have been removed from aircraft but not filed complaints with a civil rights group and I think it becomes fairly obvious that the vast majority of these alerts that arise from the logic challenged segment of the population are false alarms.

On the rare occasion that someone has seen something suspicious and it has actually turned out to be a good catch, the media has been all over it. However, I recall no more than a handful of these and most of those turned out to be nonsense too, once analysed by LE or the courts.




That is your opinion - one I disagree with vehemently.



Aha. Statistics!

Presumably, you are perfectly happy with the number of people killed in road accidents every year. How does that compare with the type of air disaster you appear to be concerned about?