Boomer

I for one don't think a "no carry on baggage" policy is silly, sorry to disagree with my friend njdavid. I has merit.

what conserns me is since thr FBI identified the hijackers so quickly, they must clearly have some list of known terrorist suspects.

How about requiring airlines to provide a flight manifest to airport security the day before the flight. This would give them time to check for "known" entities.

I realize this isn't a total solution, but it would help.

What about people that buy a ticket same day? well airport security would be able to flag those and watch them a little more closely.

From what I read about the FBI investigation, some of the names were known to ins and fbi as possible criminals. If they had the passenger manifest on sunday, we might have 1000's of people alive today that are dead.

I know the ACLU and friends will scream about this, but I for one don't care if the FBI knows what flights I'm on, I have no reason to fear that. Only the terrorists would have reason to fear such a system.

I add my vote for armed skymarshall's on every flight.

Back in the 1980's when nyc subway crime was getting out of control and ridership was dropping, The NYCTA started a program where every train after 8pm(the high crime time) had a uniformed police officer onboard. Not only di it reduce crime, it made people feel safer. It led to a slight increase in the subway fare, but there were few cmplaints.

What would be the cost of a skymashall on most flights? probably very little added cost to ticket. Look at all the taxes,fees surcharges we pay for this improvement and that in our airline tickets. What are we talking about adding 3 or 4% to an airline ticket? I'd gladly pay it, and I bet most others would gladly pay that also.

swag

Folks have suggested that security folks should be better paid, presumably thinking that this gets better qualified and/or more attentive personnel.

Instead of a blanket raise in the hourly wage, how about a bonus for each weapon etc found? If I'm making $8/hour, but I get $2000 for identifying an illegal blade, I'm going to pay attention.

doc

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Interesting and valid points with which I tend to agree.

And it is good to hear from you, boomer.

Moriarty

To avoid reposting my suggestions:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum1/HTML/005198.html

Marco Polo

I posted this under the AA forum:
In many international airports before you can board an airoplane you need to show your boarding pass and your passport to security personnel who validate the name , photo and boarding pass correspond. If it's a fake passport and the boarding pass and ID conform then the imposter/terrorist is on the plane.
If the cabin were a secure area he/she would have serious difficulty in taking over the plane. The pilots need to be secured from the cabin area before the pax board. They need two bullet proof doors capable of withstanding serious attack so there is a holding area between the two doors such that when they get their coffee delivered or they take a leak, they pass through the secure area between the two doors. The outside of the doors and the secure area needs a monitor so they can see who's trying to gain entry. It would also be advisable to have a monitor in each cabin so the captain can see what's happening on the flight at all times.
Whilst the terrorist attempts to gain access with threats of executing the flight attendants or pax the pilots have time to try and set the plane down safely at the nearest airport.
Oh, and how about a large Koran at the boarding gate that you put your hand on and say, 'I swear I will not hijack this plane, I am not carrying explosives, weapons or chemical agents.'

Decentlegroom please

There are some very good ideas here but sadly I don't think any of them will stop someone doing what these people did (if they are so determined)

El AL is often quoted as an example of an airline who has cracked this problem but they seem to have just displaced the problems to American carriers(when the terrorists couldn't get EL AL they went for Israel's allies - TWA, Pan Am,United and AA and they have got them all over the last few decades)

The question we are all avoiding is how do we stop people wanting to do this ? (and I don't know the answer to this either)

We in our grief, are focussing on one element we feel we can control (airline security) but it's only a symptom it's not the problem.

Sorry to sound so downbeat, I guess I am, like many others still very upset.

CMW

I agree with many others who feel that it is hard to say what could have been done differently to stop what happened Tuesday, given that the men had been learning how to fly planes in order to use them as missiles and were willing to die for their "cause".

It amazes me though that known terrorists/ sympathizers used their real names and were known to federal agancies by these names. Maybe that was not the case for all of the terrorists but if they had tickets booked in their real names that should have set a flag off somewhere.

ExMo

This all seems somewhat like locking the barn door after ... (you know the rest).

Anyway, the proposed changes are great for show but would do little to prevent the sophisticated type of terrorist, that we saw this week, from doing their dastardly deeds. Maybe they will prevent a bomb from blowing up at an airport entrance or mean that a bomber must actually be on the plane when s/he blows it up.

We all know that security at most U.S. airports stinks. It keeps the dumb and crazy would be hijackers off planes but not the determined terrorist. Tighten up metal detectors all you want and provide better trained security guards at the scanner but what do you do about ceramic knives? They can be carried through any metal detector and kill you just as dead as a metal one. And that's just one of several weapons that could be brought on board undetected.

Here are a few ideas, some of which have been mentioned previously:

Reinforcing the cockpit -- door and bulkhead wall -- and strict rules that mean you sacrifice the cabin crew and passengers if you have to but you don't open the door.

Arm the cockpit crew. OK, they're not cops but if someone breaks down that reinforced door or the captain wants to play hero and save the FAs and pax then s/he has a way to do so.

Double or triple passenger screening like they do in Europe and on El Al.

Much more extensive human intelligence work to ferret out the plots before they can be carried to fruition.

Sky marshals on every flight.

All this will cost the Feds, the airlines and the pax money and time. Are we all willing to pay the price or will the memory of all this fade in five years and we will go back to a system open to terror????

mikey1003

Of course this is over reaction. It will pass in time. But we just had 4 planes turned into ICBMS and our government was caught with it's pants so far down that they may never get their goodies covered. To the FAA, over reacting is good. In time cooler heads will prevail.

I, for 1, would be very happy with extreme checking of us and our luggage. Any of you Domestic only members of this board need to clear security at Frankfurt or Tel Aviv if you want to see security.

I sell electro therapy products. My briefcase looks like a textbook in bomb disposal when viewed through x-ray. Before Tuesday, I was only handchecked (and this was usually the swab check) about once in every 6-8 flights. (The ratio was not much better during the Gulf War)

I would be thrilled if I was checked every flight AND everyone of you and the rest of the PAX were also checked.

I would be happy with air marshals --even on a random basis.

One of the National talking heads maybe Tom Brokow or Peter Jennings said it best. Security is a joke! We are checked by the Old, the Lame and the Foreign....His words...not mine. HIRE REAL SECURITY AND CHECK EVERYONE EQUALLY from the President of the airline to the toilet cleaner. Check and secure the ramps.

The airlines and airport collect a tax from you every time that you fly and they still hire security people that couldnt even get a job making your hamburger at Mickey Ds.


Only ticketed PAX through security is probably not bad in that keeps the number of people that muct be checked down and speeds things up for the rest of us.

But let's be real in what we do.

Closing short term parking is crazy. Cancelling curb side checkin of baggage is crazy. All this does is gang up people at the counters when the luggage goes through the same scanners. (Put airline counter reps and security people at the curbs to ask the questions-- We still have to go through x-ray and metal scans after our luggage is checked WHERE EVER.

It also hurts many fine Sky Caps.

I just drove home from the EastCoast. At the Dayton,OH airport, car rental return was moved from in front of the terminal to a block away at the car service center. What did this accomplish? How does this make me secure? (BTW, in case you are interested...Alamo allowed me no drop charge or milage or one way charge AND they allowed me to return the car to National because there is no Alamo in Dayton)

I am sure that since these *******s turned our planes into flying bombs, they could have cared less where they parked! They probly could have cared less about increased questioning..they spent years putting this together--I am sure that if they wanted they could have had credible identification that proved that they were George W. Bush or Mickey Mouse and that they would have been let through.

I will still bet back on a plane next week. That's my job. I want someone to reduce the odds of my ending up in a crater somewhere. Nothing is foolproof. But what had yesterday was a joke. Lets just not over react and go from a joke to something that is still a joke and is for show only.

Mikey likes it

Another suggestion:

Give the pilots a) a better reinforced door and b) the ability to depressurize the cabin without the masks dropping. This would permit the pilots the ability to knock everyone out if necessary.

A possible scenario: hijacker bent on self- (and others-) destruction grabs someone in the back, threatening to kill them if the pilot does not turn over control of the a/c. F/A rings a panic button. Pilots grab O2 masks and push a couple of buttons, depressurizing the cabin and within 30-40 seconds knocking everyone out. Of course this would have to be above what, 25,000 feet?

Pilots then head for the nearest a/p. Authorities are waiting to sort the terrorist(s) out before they regain consciousness.

The terrorists can't get into the cockpit to thwart this procedure because it (cockpit) is secure. The only way around this would be for the hijackers to smuggle O2 and masks onboard. Not likely.

Risks: a) smothering everyone on board if depressurization at too high an altitude. Keep the cabin at a pressure able to support life but low enough to accomplish the knockout. b) terrorists initiate takeover too low for depressurization to work. Pilots declare an emergency and quickly climb (a couple of minutes at most?) to an altitude where this would work.

If the terrorists want to use the plane as a weapon, turn it back against them.

Mike

jabber

A simple and cheap suggestion, tied to the stronger cockpit doors. Put a peephole in the door so the cockpit crew can see what's happening on the other side before they unlock/open the door.

Better yet, how about a closed-circuit TV system of some kind that has selectable views of the cockpit door area, the galley areas, and the cabin area. Again this would allow the cockpit crew a view into their aircraft without leaving the relative safety of the cockpit. This would also be nice if tied somehow into the data recorder systems, to help in the forensics after the fact so we might all learn how to continually improve flight safety.

BTW, another advantage of the decompression idea above would be that it would limit or eliminate the risk of explosive decompression if someone on the aircraft (bad guy, sky marshal, pilot) were to start shooting, set off an explosive device, etc. At least then the aircraft maintains it's structural integrity and can be landed safely.

-- jab

blackjack-21

Most of the above suggestions deal with the passengers on an aircraft, and rightly so.
But a point we may have missed is, what about the ground service employees at an airport, namely the aircraft cleaners, fuelers, ground handlers--shouldn't they also be screened with background checks upon hiring? My point is this: How did the terrorists get their weapons aboard the planes? Were the metal detectors and scanners ALL so inefficently used that all of the knives were missed? Isn't it just possible that the weapons were already on the aircraft, hidden by associates earlier, even before the terrorists got on the planes? Just speculation, of course, and we may never know the answers, but a possibility.
I think this possibility should not be overlooked, and stronger security checks for ground staff should also be put into place.
Just my 2 cents.

bj-21.

ExMo

Well, maybe someone is listening. I just heard that Kyocera is recalling their ceramic knives from retail stores. Of course, there are tens of thousands of them in the hands of consumers and who knows who else.

irabk

Let the masks drop. How far could they get tied to the end of a two foot tube as their only source of air? If they get feisty, yank their cord...

squeakr

I'd really like to follow up on collecting all the suggestions and putting them forth - all the boards at this point have had some good ideas posted and I would hate to lose them. any volunteers to help collect htise ideas??