If you want truly effective security do what they do on El Al, the Israelis are much better at this than the Americans.

We'd still have security if we cut 95% of the crap in place right now. @:-)

No thank you. The Israelis are welcome to keep their policies of interrogation and harassment. If a government actor tried that in the USA they should be told to go do something biologically obscene to themselves.

The TLV model is not scalable.


Spending on security is now 10 times what it was in 2001. We could roll back to those levels and whatever portion of the single-percenter TSA cheerleaders that decide to no longer fly would be offset by those that come back after having stopped flying because of TSA harassment. Also, visitors to our country that have been spending their vacations in places elsewhere would also offset the single percenters.

How about an all volunteer airport security based on the volunteer fire department model? @:-)

Volunteer fire departments have problems with "whackers" that join up just so they can trick out their personal vehicles with lightbars and sirens. I hate to think what the checkpoint would be like if it were staffed by the kind of people that buy the Counter Terrorism Task Force Set of badges, ID cards, etc. It's telling of that demographic that the LEO-style jackets and shirts are available in Size XXXLarge.

Probably not too different than it is now...., since you pointed that out. Maybe I'll make myself a Counter Terrorist Homefries Security- Breakfast Responder badge.

On what info are you basing this assumption. I know people at work, in my neighborhood, and in social circles that are most assuredly not frequent flyers and loathe the TSA for all it is worth. They complain about the rude, arrogant attitude at the moat and the mindless, lazy TSO zombies that walk around aimlessly looking self-important.

Again, these are not frequent flyers, but people that utilize an airport - maybe - once or twice every couple of years.

It is the TSA that seems to be turning people off to traveling.

Tomorrow, I will drive 700 miles, RT to attend a meeting. This will be the second time in 5 days that I have done so. I find this preferable to dealing with the TSA and their stupidity. Eventually, the TSA will bring the airline industry to it's knees. They are the number one reason that many people I know refuse to fly.

One of the problems with TSA is that they don't bother to make a good first impression, and it just unravels further, the more you travel.

I can't answer that in specifics except to say that I believe that the security theater is now as much about keeping casual flyers happy as it is about making it look like the government is on top of things. There is also a sort of CYA, not-on-my-watch attitude.

But another important question is really the inverse (unless it is the converse-- they taught us that stuff in math class back in school and I guess it didn't stick): How many business executives and other travelers would travel by air more if it were more convenient. Remember it was only 10-15 years ago that UA had a special check-in desk at ORD for people with less than 20 minutes until their scheduled flight departure time. If we went to a system where air travel were less of a pain in the rear, there are many who would fly more, not less.

Well, what I feel many of you seem unable to see is that the larger population is quite convinced that the status quo pro ante did not work. They have this silly idea that if pre-TSA security, the thing you all seem to prize, failed to prevent 9/11. So they are looking for evolution, not just "lets go back to 9/10/2001". Maybe some of them are less than happy with leaving much earlier to the airport, but are there mass opinion polls anywhere that show they believe in the kind of security that is favored here? Or do you believe that they've all been brainwashed so completely that no poll could possibly be fair?

And if that is how you feel, aren't you raging in the dark since without broad public pressure, is there even the slightest political possibility of any change you want to happen?

In April, we drove 18 hours (each way) to visit relatives in Florida. In May, we drove 15 hours (each way) to attend an awards dinner.

We simply choose to no longer deal with TSA.


~~ Irish

That's what freedom is all about. But I gotta say, that doesn't sound like all that great a curse to me. I've driven for a couple of days in a few cases. More than halfway across the USA. For some of us, this is pretty much what we grew up with, so we tend to think of some younger folks as a little spoiled in their expectation of instantly moving across thousands of miles and considering an hour in security as intolerable. You probably have little concept of what you missed. A good deal of the earth is foreign territory to you, since you just pass over it at 35,000 feet. We experienced every inch of it. How many have sailed the Atlantic from New York to Germany and back? Have had dinners for a week in the dining room of a passenger ship? Not terribly long ago, it was a widely shared experience. Now hardly anyone has done anything but maybe get on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship.