I'd let the airport situation right now stay as it is; people who wanna fly, go ahead and fly. Just give me a reliable, third alternative to flying or driving that I can use with no security circus, like a more reliable and efficient rail system.

Simply put, Yes to airport security (I could careless as I rarely fly anyway now), but no to rail security; keep that cr@p out of our rail stations. :mad:

I'm the OP who began this thread...I didn't post the "rest of the story" in my original post, but I provided the link and hoped that people would read what the author had to say...

In case you didn't click the link, the author continues:

I have posed this question to several friends and colleagues, and a majority say they would choose Liberty Air. Their reasoning is simple. Although the risk of terrorism is higher, the chances of an attack on any given flight are still exceedingly small. How small? Consider that driving in a car is many times more likely to be fatal than flying in a plane. Even if Liberty Air were also many times more dangerous than regulated airlines, it would merely approach the risk level of driving rather than flying.


My unscientific poll notwithstanding, many people will still choose the TSA and the relative security it provides. Nevertheless, the fact that a substantial number of Americans would opt for Liberty Air suggests a major disconnect between TSA policies and public opinion. After all, the TSA should be engaged in the same cost-benefit calculus that I outlined above. It should balance freedom and convenience with security, but—like nearly all bureaucratic agencies—it has come down far heavier on the side of security than many Americans prefer. To make matters worse, the TSA has made this choice for everyone, not for just the most security-conscious citizens.

To bolster the argument, imagine that Liberty Air actually employs a little bit of security. Let’s say it checks IDs against a government database in order to prevent people on a terrorist watch list from boarding. For those of you previously wary of Liberty Air, would you fly it now? Maybe Liberty Air also bans knives and guns from flights. How about now? Maybe it also makes certain high-risk passengers go through metal detectors. Is that enough? I imagine many readers on the fence are now leaning toward Liberty Air. The point is that the security precautions most Americans consider sufficient will likely be far less stringent than those the TSA employs.

The “Liberty Air” thought experiment highlights the need for balancing freedom and risk. A surprising number of TSA supporters have missed this point. In defending TSA procedures as crucial to national security, they rarely mention that Americans may legitimately prefer to trade some of that security for freedom and convenience. The defenders' implicit assumption—and the government’s—is that the only acceptable number of terrorist attacks is zero. That assumption fails to weigh the costs of security against the benefits, and it is the kind of thinking that ratchets government regulation up and up, beyond levels most Americans find acceptable.

We need alternatives to the TSA so that passengers can decide for themselves whether procedures like full-body scans are worth the time, expense, and embarrassment. A good first step would be to allow airlines some flexibility in how they handle security. Airlines could decide whether and when to use full-body scanners, for example, and passengers could vote with their wallets by not flying on the airlines that use them excessively. Any approach to security that gives people more choices would be an improvement over the TSA’s heavy-handedness. Once all options are on the table, I expect freedom-oriented airlines to do brisk business. Sign me up!

I guess this is where I lean...let the passengers decide for themselves what level of security they need to feel comfortable. Those of us who see the current "theater" being forced upon us at airports could choose something else, if it were available. However, our current regulations provide no choice. It's "all or nothing".

Thanks for all of the debate and discussion...it's forums like FT that are good, because we can at least have a dialogue about things - as opposed to another blog-which-will-not-be-named where there's never dialogue but just pure propaganda.

So, what you're saying is that you're ok with the government violating other's civil liberties, just not your own?

--Jon

I'd like to reserve a seat for the first Liberty Air flight right now.

We pretty much are flying with no security, thanks to TSA's abysmal failure rate. Yet despite TSA's abject failure, planes still aren't falling out of the sky.

Things that make one go hmmm ...

No--you're going backwards. They pumped the cabin pressure up. It caused them quite a problem with sealing the cockpit windows as there weren't any. (They were using a boneyard plane.)

FWIW, I've flown on airlines / commercial flights without security, and have even earned Frequent Flyer miles for the flights with various programs such as CO, AA, and UA.

As a general rule, these "no security" flights tend to be on small aircraft, fly "milk-run" type routes and provide service between regional airports and smaller airports/fields where formal security checkpoints just don't exist.

I've taken these "no security" flights in a few different nations and on different continents. A few of these "no security" flights were actually international flights as well that involved clearing immigrations/customs on landing. Nothing extremely formal though.

Often the airport is just a short runway with a small area of tarmac for parking the aircraft. If there's a terminal, it's typically a small waiting area with a few chairs. It's nice being able to de-plane, obtain luggage instantly, and have a vehicle parked on the tarmac ready to meet & greet me.

You missed the point I was trying to reach; we're only given two opposite extremes of choice right now just like our polarized political landscape. If you want to get there quickly, suck it up and fly. If you don't like it, drive your own rear-end there and get there much later.

There's no middle ground which could be rail.

If that was your point it was poorly articulated.

The fact that you said you don't care what happens to flyers because you rarely fly leads people to believe that you are ok with people having their liberties taken from them as long as it doesn't apply/inconvenience you.

I am all for having other choices for travel being developed, however, no type of travel should require the forfeiting of your liberties.

Thanks for the clarification. I strongly agree that the public, the airlines, the airports and the government needs to have a vigorous discussion of how much security, at what cost (to our rights as well as to our time and money) is appropriate for air travel, in proportion to other forms of transportation and in proportion to other possible uses of the funding. This could be through having various options, from Liberty Air to TSA-air, or it could be through consensus and compromise among interested parties. The current approach of a gov't agency just doing as much as they can get away with, as quickly as possible, with no oversight or limits, is unacceptable.

As a detail, I don't agree with the exact sequence of introducing "a little bit of security" as outlined above (ie, No Fly List, then obvious weapons, then profiling..) I would strongly support a simple return to the WTMD and x-ray, supplemented by random ETD. But that's the point at which the discussion needs to start.

Granted it was a poor choice of words and I apologize if the sarcastic comment caused confusion.

The point was that, as stated in another thread, I've found rail travel (up to a certain distance) to be just as convenient as air travel in its current state that I rarely fly anymore. Granted it makes no sense to travel cross-country via rail, but for certain short distances, rail makes better sense for me now and that I'd be dog-gone pissed if they start adding the TSA BS to rail stations in the name of security

Did you read about that business man who flew across the country with a glock hand gun in his laptop bag because he had forgotten about it.

How could they have missed that?

I guess that is why we elect officials

Does anyone not think it interesting that Obama now supports the TSA as do most of the senior people of both parties.

Not all of them and certainly not my congressman. And fortunately enough of them are starting to notice the TSA shenanigans.

Other way, Polonius - raised pressure inside the hull to greater than Patm. About +8psid, IIRC (they did the math to show what it would be, I just don't remember exactly what they came up with), so the hull was subjected to exactly the same differential-pressure as a plane in flight. Remember, the pressure inside is GREATER than outside, at altitude.

It took C4 for them to cause enough of a blowout to potentially harm a passenger sitting in the seat next to the hole, blowing Buster partway out of the hole (head and one shoulder up to the arm - didn't pull him out of the seat). Bullet holes had basically NO effect. Wouldn't even shatter the window, just made a 9mm hole, and Buster didn't even move when they did the firearms-based test.

They also did a later test to account for stresses imposed by high-speed airflow over the hole as well, which did cause slightly more damage but still was basically a non-event, as I recall. It didn't change their finding for the myth ("Busted!").

Mythbusters rocks. :D