a view from the inside
#76
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Baltimore, MD USA
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Posts: 4,332
Coming into this forum looking for straightforward advice in a non-confrontational atmosphere is like going to Al Sharpton for tips on racial harmony.
Kudos, and thanks, to the OP for having the guts to post in this forum. Your post was very refreshing and confirmed some of what I already thought was the norm in the minds of most of the people at the checkpoint.
Kudos, and thanks, to the OP for having the guts to post in this forum. Your post was very refreshing and confirmed some of what I already thought was the norm in the minds of most of the people at the checkpoint.
The other one is the practical forum. You go there for straightforward advice in a non-confrontational atmosphere.
#77
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That's why the forum was split. This is the debate forum; you come here to debate. Coming here for advice without a debate is like going to Jiffy Lube looking for a car wash.
The other one is the practical forum. You go there for straightforward advice in a non-confrontational atmosphere.
The other one is the practical forum. You go there for straightforward advice in a non-confrontational atmosphere.
#78
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Baltimore, MD USA
Programs: Southwest Rapid Rewards. Tha... that's about it.
Posts: 4,332
It's a good system, I think.
#79
Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: Salish Sea
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Posts: 8,974
It's the DHS that needs dismantling, the b*st*rd child of 9/11.
If the TSA were under the aegis of a competent Department or agency there would be a better chance of some effective oversight (NB I said chance ) . I don't know which one; the FAA comes to mind but they don't have a stellar reputation either. DoJ perhaps ?
If the TSA were under the aegis of a competent Department or agency there would be a better chance of some effective oversight (NB I said chance ) . I don't know which one; the FAA comes to mind but they don't have a stellar reputation either. DoJ perhaps ?
#80
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: DCA / WAS
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Posts: 9,388
Sadly, OP just confirmed that the people at checkpoints (btw, the word itself is really hideous) take what happens there as a norm. The norm now is that each and everyone air passenger has to be considered a criminal and treated as such. I do not see anything refreshing in that view. All the OP has expressed is just his view on how to make this norm to look a bit nicer. Smoke in mirrors.
My laptop wallpaper is a photo of me taken on my first flight at age 7. It was taken on the ramp at DCA of me boarding a DC6. That inspired me to travel, see new sights, and enjoy not only the learning about different cultures but also the joy of traveling.
Unfortunately, the TSA has done far more to destroy the virtues and fun of traveling than anything else.
#81
Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: HSV
Posts: 876
Originally Posted by exbayern
(Actually, it isn't the accent in your area which stymies me the most; I've had to admit defeat a few times in rural Florida and Alabama in the past)
...Okay, yeah, in all honesty? Those deep-rural Alabama accents get me from time to time, too. They're gone now - one retired, one resigned and moved on to become a professional photographer - but there were two in Huntsville that had really, really, really bad accents. The second one was getting ready to hand-wand a fellow and went through the whole spiel to him. When he was done, the passenger looked around and announced, quite loudly, if he could get someone in there who spoke English.
Our supervisor lost it, she was laughing so hard.
#82
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 6,967
That may have been funny at your airport, to your supervisor, but it isn't always the case. I was in JAX and after three tries of listening to someone who mumbled at me progressively louder like Charlie Brown's teacher, I finally said as politely as I could 'I'm sorry, I don't understand a word you are saying'. That resulted in a very aggressive response from the supervisors there.
Sometimes I think that you and gsoltso don't realise that what happens at your airport on your shift doesn't happen everywhere. As passengers we have no idea what the response may be, and what may set one person off on a tirade.
(And by the way, I have been to every corner of AL over the years, and been to many towns and places even people in AL find remarkable. I stopped flying in/out of AL whenever possible and drive from neighbouring states, or even MSY for Mobile area)
Sometimes I think that you and gsoltso don't realise that what happens at your airport on your shift doesn't happen everywhere. As passengers we have no idea what the response may be, and what may set one person off on a tirade.
(And by the way, I have been to every corner of AL over the years, and been to many towns and places even people in AL find remarkable. I stopped flying in/out of AL whenever possible and drive from neighbouring states, or even MSY for Mobile area)
#83
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Greensboro
Programs: TSA
Posts: 2,424
That may have been funny at your airport, to your supervisor, but it isn't always the case. I was in JAX and after three tries of listening to someone who mumbled at me progressively louder like Charlie Brown's teacher, I finally said as politely as I could 'I'm sorry, I don't understand a word you are saying'. That resulted in a very aggressive response from the supervisors there.
Sometimes I think that you and gsoltso don't realise that what happens at your airport on your shift doesn't happen everywhere. As passengers we have no idea what the response may be, and what may set one person off on a tirade.
(And by the way, I have been to every corner of AL over the years, and been to many towns and places even people in AL find remarkable. I stopped flying in/out of AL whenever possible and drive from neighbouring states, or even MSY for Mobile area)
Sometimes I think that you and gsoltso don't realise that what happens at your airport on your shift doesn't happen everywhere. As passengers we have no idea what the response may be, and what may set one person off on a tirade.
(And by the way, I have been to every corner of AL over the years, and been to many towns and places even people in AL find remarkable. I stopped flying in/out of AL whenever possible and drive from neighbouring states, or even MSY for Mobile area)
I understand completely. I have enough accounts from people here and other sites, that even if 50% of those are false accounts, then there are way too many people that just don't get it. There are times where being firm is required, but that doesn't alleviate the responsibility of being professional. Dean and I are lucky in that we work at locations that are smaller and more "homey" as they say around here. The longest wait time I have seen in the last couple of years was 19 minutes - and that was from arriving at the end of the TDC line until they passed through the WTMD and were standing beside their items. I understand that the pressure of working at a larger airport can get to you (I pulled a 30 day stint at LAX), but being professional keeps you out of trouble and makes it easier to resolve a situation than shouting and being unprofessional. This is not rocket science, it is a fairly simple process from beginning to end, why would anyone want to make that process any harder than it absolutely has to be?
#84
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Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: DFW
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I understand completely. I have enough accounts from people here and other sites, that even if 50% of those are false accounts, then there are way too many people that just don't get it. There are times where being firm is required, but that doesn't alleviate the responsibility of being professional. Dean and I are lucky in that we work at locations that are smaller and more "homey" as they say around here. The longest wait time I have seen in the last couple of years was 19 minutes - and that was from arriving at the end of the TDC line until they passed through the WTMD and were standing beside their items. I understand that the pressure of working at a larger airport can get to you (I pulled a 30 day stint at LAX), but being professional keeps you out of trouble and makes it easier to resolve a situation than shouting and being unprofessional. This is not rocket science, it is a fairly simple process from beginning to end, why would anyone want to make that process any harder than it absolutely has to be?
#85
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Gun Taken From Suicidal JetBlue Pilot in Crew Lounge
May 21, 2010
A JetBlue pilot who was abruptly removed from duty in the crew lounge of Boston's Logan International Airport was carrying a gun, a Massachusetts State Police spokesman told ABC News.
JetBlue issued a statement today saying the pilot was relieved of duty for health reasons, but denied reports that he had sent a text message threatening to crash the plane.
THe BDO's usually can tell in about 2 seconds that the person isnt a threat... Theres a big difference between someone who is pissed off because they are inconvinienced and just dont like screening, and someone who is truley angry to the extent that hes going to inflict harm on others. Most of us who have been around a while, have learned to tell the difference.
It is very, very possible that there are "sleepers" that are enrolled in flight school presently, clean background and possibly US citizens, and it is simply too difficult / not possible to prevent all possible sympathizers or people with friends that may be affiliated with terrorism.
We had a FedEx guy on the jumpseat not long after this happened. He mentioned that the cockpit was... I'll just say a mess after that incident.
#86
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Up in the air far too often.
Programs: Star Gold
Posts: 354
Well, high probability, no. Over 50%? No. But possible, and something that should be thought about a bit? Absolutely. We are spending a huge amount of money and resources thinking that Joe Schmoe has a bomb in his pants. Is THAT possible? Yes, probable? no. I'm just pointing out that we should not create additional huge holes in security while worrying about even more remote threats.
The 9/11 student pilots were pretty obvious by today's standards and poor students, but were still largely ignored. Pilot background checks will be a bit more thorough nowadays, and people will be more likely to report "suspicious" pilots, but there are far too many trainees and junior pilots for this sort of thing to be perfectly reliable. Having a sympathetic pilot or two somewhere in America would be quite valuable to a terrorist organization.
Yeah, what a horrific incident. I remember once listening to the audio of it, but I won't again. Awful. I think all of those guys (including the offender) are still alive -- he is in a prison somewhere forever.
#87
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Baltimore, MD USA
Programs: Southwest Rapid Rewards. Tha... that's about it.
Posts: 4,332
[Snipped for brevity...]The 9/11 student pilots were pretty obvious by today's standards and poor students, but were still largely ignored. Pilot background checks will be a bit more thorough nowadays, and people will be more likely to report "suspicious" pilots, but there are far too many trainees and junior pilots for this sort of thing to be perfectly reliable. Having a sympathetic pilot or two somewhere in America would be quite valuable to a terrorist organization.
The sad truth is that small terrorist groups (I refuse to call them "cells" because that implies that they're small parts of a huge network, like the French Resistance or the Bieber Fan Club) are perfectly capable of pulling off large, well-planned, successful attacks. In fact, they're much more likely to be successful. You see, everybody knows that the best way to keep a secret is to NOT TELL EVERYBODY, so the more people you have in your al Qaeda Local Lodge #578, the more likely you are to have one of them get cheesed off that he wasn't elected Grand Poobah or given the keys to the Mystery Machine, and either split the group or go squeal to the FBI out of spite.
Besides, 9/11 wasn't nearly as complex as we like to think. Sure, it wasn't easy, but the hardest part of the whole plan was finding 20 guys who were both crazy enough to kill themselves and not stupid enough to go postal in the terminal and give the whole thing away before they got off the ground. Coordination? One guy picks four flights and buys 20 tickets. Timing? Heck, the AIRLINES took care of the timing on 9/11 - the flights were all scheduled. Precision? Well, there I have to hand it to the hijackers; 75% of them were able to hijack the planes, find their targets, and fly the planes into them. I don't doubt that, had the passengers on United 93 not rebelled and been within a hair's breadth of re-taking the plane, it would have hit its intended target, as well. But I have to give as much credit to the flight instructors in Florida who unwittingly taught the hijackers their air navigation skills, as I do to the hijackers themselves.
Basically, although there is danger, and there are nutbars out there who want to kill us, the threat is so wildly overblown by paranoia that we've put ourselves back into a never-ending Cold War that will eventually lead us to destroy ourselves, or the rest of the world to step in and put an end to the madness.
All of this has happened before. All of it will happen again. And when it happens, it's never pretty.
Last edited by WillCAD; Jan 16, 2012 at 8:22 pm Reason: * SPECTRE: SPecial Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion
#88
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Up in the air far too often.
Programs: Star Gold
Posts: 354
Argh. Terrorist "organizations" are mostly loosely affiliated groups of wackjobs whose particular brand of wackotude happens to be similar. The idea that al Qaeda is some vast, global, well-organized, well-funded, well-trained paramilitary organization akin to SPECTRE* is simply not so; it stems from the American arrogance that "no little group of loonies could have pulled off something as complex as 9/11 right under the noses of the smartest, coolest, badest-assed country on Earth! They MUST be some sort of super-duper terrorist Legion of Doom, with resources all over the world!" Nope. Simply not true.
Taking an ideological 21 year old and saying, "get an ATP certificate" is not that difficult, in the numerous and somewhat anonymous "zero to hero" programs, can be done quite rapidly, and it would not be remotely financially prohibitive.
Nobody said that terrorist organizations were highly sophisticated or organized; they don't have to be.
#89
Join Date: Nov 2010
Posts: 360
He is still a TSO. Ridicule by others is unnecessary and some of us will attack them as long as they attack us at the CP. I think it's quite nice.
#90
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Up in the air far too often.
Programs: Star Gold
Posts: 354
Who's up for an early January "mileage run?" It would be a good excuse to attend "occupy cupcakes!"