Airports to ban cigarette lighters beyond checkpoints

Duluth News Tribune ^ | 12/31/04 | BRYON OKADA/Knight Ridder

[lbt4000]

Just another reason not to fly again. It has been said, especially in Europe how stupid we Americans are. This kind of thing certainly gives them reason to say that. When a fox gets in the hen house, doesn't it make more sense to catch the fox rather than flog the surviving chickens continuously...

[eeriegeno]

Why don't we just ban air travelers and get it over with.

Whether they realize it or not, incrementally, they are slowly accomplishing this!!!

[joesnuffy]

Of course Manietta is not being asked to resign....and he has faitfully kept the passenger and cargo pilots from being armed...like a good doggie....

[jwpjr]

re: You fly to a distant city, and have cigarettes in your pocket. Why should you have to buy a lighter?

Simply have everyone put their lighter(s) in a big box before boarding the plane, then the next flight's passengers can take a lighter from the box as they exit the plane.

[LibertarianInExile]

No, no, no, you simply don't understand national security priorities. We must focus on LIGHTERS first, THEN the borders. Only after our planes are lighter-free will the country be even close to safe from terrorism.

/blistering, scorching sarcasm

[LibertarianInExile]

Bump to that!

[jwpjr]

Do you recall the incident over the Gulf of Mexico, almost 30 years ago, when a National Air Lines flight suffered an uncontained engine failure? A piece of shrapnel took out a window near the engine and the resulting decompression sucked an NAL mechanic who was deadheading to New Orleans out the opening. They were at cruising altitude, 30,000 feet or more, and he had been sitting in a aisle seat. He was sucked across two other passengers who were wearing their seat belts! Talk about God deciding it's time for you to die! As you point out though, although it was pretty catastrophic for the NAL mechanics flying to NOLA that day the rest of the passengers and the airplane survived the incident.

[LibertarianInExile]

[jimboster]

Hey buddy, got a match?

[LibertarianInExile]

You know, I decided I'd look at the NTSB reports and the only discussions of 'explosive decompression' I could find all had to do with passengers sucked out of a malfunctioning door. Now, maybe I'm cynical, but a door opening on a flight going 600 mph is gonna produce a Venturi effect to the point that unbuckled people, and even loosely buckled folks, will probably be sucked out. But that is NOT depressurization doing the work, which is the big 'explosive decompression' myth.

The only National Airlines accident over the Gulf of Mexico was in 1953, according to the NTSB. And in that accident, a wing FELL OFF.

[Faith-Hope]

I certainly don't pretend to know all the answers. There are better ways to get passengers on and off planes faster.

For those folks that fly several times a week using the same airline, they should have some type of a security pass that would qualify them from having to go through security. I do think they should have to go though a finger print machine to verify they are the person with the security pass. (They would have to go though some type of verifying process or they would become prime targets for murder.)

Just this one thing could help the lines move faster.

For those who would want a security chip inserted somewhere under their skin, this should be considered as an option. They would also need to go through a finger printing machine.

[GRRRRR]

Next, they will take away all pointy things that we carry in our briefcases and backpacks...

[sergeantdave]

A thousand monkeys sitting at a thousand typewriters could eventually write a best seller in a thousand years.

A million bureaucrats sitting at a million desks couldn't get anything right in a million years.

Let passengers with concealed carry permits carry.

[wita]

That was my thought as soon as I read the headline. Clothes are next.

[jwpjr]

That's interesting. I have been an aviation lover since I was four-years-old, and remember that accident vividly. Maybe my mind is playing tricks on me in my old age. I'll look around and see if I can find some reference to it, although if it's figment of my imagination then it's going to be pretty unlikely I'd find any documentation. Thanks for the info!

[TexasGreg]

I'm sure this has been expained to you before as being nonsense. I'd explain it again, but you would only forget again.

Yes, it has been. Yes, I knew it. Yes,
Happy New Year!

[gogogodzilla]

Shhh, the TSA might be reading this thread and might get some ideas.

[TexKat]

They'll get my Zippo when they pry it form my cold dead fingers!

lol

[TexKat]

"THIS is crazy!"That is stupid! What is next, no shoes, no hand, no teeth, that persons do not know what that persons write.

I think I'll go into the airline business. I'll name my company Nudist Airlines. Passengers will be subject to full body x-rays prior to boarding. No carry on luggage, matter of fact, no luggage at all

That should take care of everything.

[jwpjr]

OK, turns out I am not losing my mind completely, apparantly just in pieces! The accident was indeed a National Air Lines aircraft and it was 11/3/'73

Here's what the report said:

Overspeeding of the starboard engine caused the engine to disintegrate. Pieces struck the fuselage, breaking a window, causing rapid explosive decompression and a passenger was sucked out of the plane. The plane landed safely. Out of boredom, the captain and flight engineer decided to experiment and see what would happen to the autothrottle system if the circuit breakers which supplied power to the instruments which measured the rotational speed of each engine's low pressure compressor were tripped. This led to engine overspeeding and destruction of the engine.

Here is the link to the database of "unusual" airline accidents. It was a DC-10 and it was over New Mexico, not the Gulf of Mexico.

http://www.planecrashinfo.com/unusual.htm

They are listed by date, starting with the oldest. It's about 10 from the bottom of the page. Check it out! Pretty interesting, not to mention scary!

Many thanks for goading me into looking this up. I had not thought about it for a lot of years.