Security Takes Fork From Pilot
Dec 21, 2011, 7:32 pm
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Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Boston
Posts: 467
Security Takes Fork From Pilot
Now up in Patrick Smith's ASK THE PILOT at Salon.com:
The Hysteria Hall of Shame: Forks, Lightsabers, and Other Madness
This is the lunatic world of security we now live in: one of blind adherence, stripped of reason and logic, in which even the stupidest of policies are enforced to the letter of the law.
Some excerpts:
“…A couple of weeks ago I proposed my idea for the American Hysteria Hall of Shame, a ranking of our more laughable and self-defeating overreactions to perceived security threats over the past decade. Safely assured of top spot, or so I thought, was the time I had a butter knife confiscated by overzealous TSA guards. I mean, what could be more ridiculous than taking a butter knife from a uniformed, on-duty pilot? Answer: confiscating a * fork * from a uniformed, on-duty airline pilot. It happened the other day…
…In the meantime, did you catch the front-page New York Times story about the drug-smuggling and theft ring broken up at Kennedy Airport? Dozens of luggage handlers were involved in a years-long operation in which they stole from passengers' suitcases and smuggled cocaine in aircraft cargo holds. Baggage handlers, by the way, do * not * have to pass through airport security…
…And I needn't be reminded of the indignities endured by passengers. A reader shares with us a story of such sublime brainlessness that, until I lost my fork, it was ready to take top honors in the Hall of Shame: One day, flying from Dallas to Jacksonville, she and her toddler son were refused passage through the TSA checkpoint because they boy was carrying -- get ready now -- his Star Wars lightsaber. A lightsaber, if you're not familiar, is a flashlight with a plastic cone attached -- or, perhaps more to the point, a toy in the shape of an imaginary weapon from a galaxy, and a line of reasoning, far, far away. ‘We were told by TSA,' she says, 'that the saber, which technically is something that does not exist, was a weapon. We were escorted out of security and sent to the ticket counter, where I had to fill out paperwork in order to check the light saber in as baggage….'”
The full article is here:
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/22/hand...sir/singleton/
Recently in ASK THE PILOT:
MEMORIES OF HOLIDAYS ALOFT. Plus, the worst Christmas song of all time.
"…On New Year's Eve I was flying over the city of Bamako, Mali, in West Africa. Fireworks explode only a few hundred feet from the ground, but enough of them together provide a unique spectacle to looking down from a jetliner. At the stroke of midnight, the city erupted in a storm of tiny explosions. The sky was lit by literally tens of thousands of small incendiaries -- white flashes everywhere, like the sea of flashbulbs you sometimes see at sporting events. From high above, Bamako looked like a war zone…."
The full article is here:
http://life.riche.salon.com/2011/11/...oft/singleton/
And feel free to share your own "Hall of Shame" security stories below.
-- Patrick Smith
The Hysteria Hall of Shame: Forks, Lightsabers, and Other Madness
This is the lunatic world of security we now live in: one of blind adherence, stripped of reason and logic, in which even the stupidest of policies are enforced to the letter of the law.
Some excerpts:
“…A couple of weeks ago I proposed my idea for the American Hysteria Hall of Shame, a ranking of our more laughable and self-defeating overreactions to perceived security threats over the past decade. Safely assured of top spot, or so I thought, was the time I had a butter knife confiscated by overzealous TSA guards. I mean, what could be more ridiculous than taking a butter knife from a uniformed, on-duty pilot? Answer: confiscating a * fork * from a uniformed, on-duty airline pilot. It happened the other day…
…In the meantime, did you catch the front-page New York Times story about the drug-smuggling and theft ring broken up at Kennedy Airport? Dozens of luggage handlers were involved in a years-long operation in which they stole from passengers' suitcases and smuggled cocaine in aircraft cargo holds. Baggage handlers, by the way, do * not * have to pass through airport security…
…And I needn't be reminded of the indignities endured by passengers. A reader shares with us a story of such sublime brainlessness that, until I lost my fork, it was ready to take top honors in the Hall of Shame: One day, flying from Dallas to Jacksonville, she and her toddler son were refused passage through the TSA checkpoint because they boy was carrying -- get ready now -- his Star Wars lightsaber. A lightsaber, if you're not familiar, is a flashlight with a plastic cone attached -- or, perhaps more to the point, a toy in the shape of an imaginary weapon from a galaxy, and a line of reasoning, far, far away. ‘We were told by TSA,' she says, 'that the saber, which technically is something that does not exist, was a weapon. We were escorted out of security and sent to the ticket counter, where I had to fill out paperwork in order to check the light saber in as baggage….'”
The full article is here:
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/22/hand...sir/singleton/
Recently in ASK THE PILOT:
MEMORIES OF HOLIDAYS ALOFT. Plus, the worst Christmas song of all time.
"…On New Year's Eve I was flying over the city of Bamako, Mali, in West Africa. Fireworks explode only a few hundred feet from the ground, but enough of them together provide a unique spectacle to looking down from a jetliner. At the stroke of midnight, the city erupted in a storm of tiny explosions. The sky was lit by literally tens of thousands of small incendiaries -- white flashes everywhere, like the sea of flashbulbs you sometimes see at sporting events. From high above, Bamako looked like a war zone…."
The full article is here:
http://life.riche.salon.com/2011/11/...oft/singleton/
And feel free to share your own "Hall of Shame" security stories below.
-- Patrick Smith
