What makes you believe that some of the terrorists wouldn't be frequent travellers? They might have taken many flights just to see how the pilots and FAs react to different situations.. For all you know, those terrorists on the planes could have been 1K's or EXP.... I think all frequent travellers or mileage runners should be questioned and go through the same security measures that they will put up in the future, just like the non-frequent flyer...

These new rules will drive many of us away from the airlines. This will apply to mileage runs, regular business trips and personal trips.

The FAA is working hard to take even more away from America than the terrorists have (with due respect to lost souls).

And sadly, these "safety" measures would not have stopped these determined individuals. Why oh why are we reacting with answers that just make us feel good about "safety" but will not change the facts.

Probably the dumbest thing going on right now is towing cars out of parking garages around America all in the name of safety.

The purpose of eliminating the curbside baggage check, as I understand it, is to increase the face to face contact time between the traveler and the more highly traind gate agent. I don't know if there is any one solution or many solutions that could have prevented Tuesdays attacks, but I don't think that there is anyone who can say definitely what wouldn't have prevented them. In the same way border patrol agents are trained to ask routine questions and watch the reactions of the individuals closely, I think that increasing trained staff and the time they are allowed to survey each traveler is a major part of the solution. All of us who are not up to no good are going to have to put up with the inconvenience of additional time going through securty. Sure, I like to buzz through customs, stopping for less than sixty seconds. It also makes me a little uneasy, knowing that others can do the same becasue there is one individual to survey almost 400 rushing travelers. Let's support the increased security efforts for the time being, even if we feel they are inadequate to begin with. If for no other reason than out of respect to the surviving families who may get some small comfort from knowing the one outcome of their sacrifice is that the incident was a catalyst for change.

re: the original topic of the thread -- my guess is that given the expected drop in traffic, that airlines will be more than happy to see yields increase for whatever reason, including mileage runs.

Of course, however, at this point I'm sure that FTers are all re-evaluating the "big-picture" benefit gained from playing the mileage treadmill game.

UNIXGUY has hit the nail on the head; the person is the key. All of these new "enhancements" are just feel good measures to reassure the public that the security folks have things under control.

Three things should be done immediately. First would be to require a passport for US citizens travelling domestic routes. Passports are bar-coded and would be scanned at check-in for a realtime check against the appropriate FBI/CIA databases. Second, visas should be required for all foreign nationals entering the US, to include our Canadian friends. Third, foreign nationals would be barred from domestic air travel within the US until they obtain an "internal" passport from the INS. This internal passport would only be granted after review by appropriate security agencies.

While Kerbside Checkin may not have prevented this weeks tragedy, in many ways it is an additional security risk.

Most of the time I'm sure it works well, but my only experience with it, failed. A friend and I used this method to check in at SJC - my friend was checked in, and I answered all of the security questions, and had my bags taken and tagged - it wasn't until we were upstairs at the gate that we discovered we only had one boarding pass - checking with the gate staff, I discovered I hadn't been checked in - They unload the bags of any passengers who check in but don't board - but how would they have known if I hadn't gotten on the plane - after all, according to their computer I was't there...

I'm not sure that this is the solution -- in fact, it would probably cause more trouble than it would solve. Only 9% of Americans hold a passport. Even if you could tap the FBI databases, how do you profile people? Do you ban the passenger who has been convicted in the past of assault? What if his sentence is already spent? Too many issues at stake.

Limited domestic flights to US citizens isn't the solution either. There are numerous examples of "sleeper" agents who have been in the US for many years and are naturalised. They typically have no criminal record and nothing to indicate that they are anything other than genuine immigrants. Until they attack, at which point it is too late.

Finally, all of the suggestions you propose seem to assume that terrorism comes from abroad. We have home-grown terrorists, too, which makes the job of identifying and neutralising terrorists even more difficult.

We can minimise the risk of terrorism, but we'll never eliminate it.

Be even more specific and discriminatory. Limit it to Arabs (Jews are semites too but I doubt if the U.S. would ever question Jews).

Might as well introduce national identity cards, something which goes against the spirit of freedom and is generally abhorred by the more libertarian-minded. By restricting these freedoms as a response, the perpetrators win.

A few posts back someone mentioned that there are no skymarshalls trained at present,it was mentioned on one of the news programs that the government would have to provide coverage for this while the sky marshalls were trained--military or other govt employees already security cleared and trained in firearms

Surely, there are enough police officers, federal security types, and military types , all cleared and trained, who could do this job at the drop of a hat, even "moonlighting" until full-time sky marshals are hired and trained.

And what good would this do? The most it would do is to stop all international exchange in the scientific and business areas(trade shows, conferences, business meetings, etc.) unless they are held in the relatively few US cities with international access.

What you are looking for is supposedly already done. The visa is issued after "extensive" criminal background check. Yes, I know it is not so extensive many times, but why not just change that. Don't bring back Ulbricht's East Germany and call it USA instead.

There currently are sky marshalls on random international flights. This is not well known. It would not be to difficult to expand this program to domestic flights.

This is inane. My guess is that every US airline would be bankrupt within a month due to number of laptops damaged alone.

What would they do with all the duty-free alcohol brought in on international flights? Throw it in the hold, where it will mostly be broken, causing the hold to be awash with high-proof alcohol? Yeah, that's a really good idea.

The reason they are creating no vehicle zones is that an effective range must be maintained to prevent damage from a terrorist favorite - the car/vehicle bomb - what better place to create more havoc, then to explode a bomb in major parking garages at airports, which would cause a chain reaction and explode all of the other vehicles....

We are at War, the enemy is very smart, well funded and does not care about human life or suffering... only its "agenda".

Doomed to Coach

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