Posted on 08/10/2006 4:27:03 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON - Beginning Friday, airline passengers will go through double screening to make sure they're not carrying liquids onto planes, the head of the airline industry's largest trade group said.
Passengers and their carry-on luggage will be checked not only at the main security checkpoint, but also a second time at the boarding gate. The stepped-up screening in response to a new terrorist threat began Thursday at 25 airports where planes leave for Britain.
"It's going to spread across the whole system tomorrow," James May, president of the Air Transport Association, said Thursday.
The response to the terrorist threat produced long lines at airports Thursday as security officials scrambled to put new measures in place and passengers faced perplexing new restrictions — including the ban on carrying liquids onto aircraft.
Intelligence had indicated the terror plot unfolding in Britain involved using benign liquids that could be mixed inside an airplane cabin to make an explosive.
While plots to blow up airliners using liquid explosives are nothing new — such an attempt was foiled more than a decade ago — the government has been slow to upgrade its security equipment at airport checkpoints so that it can detect explosives on passengers.
Transportation Security Administration chief Kip Hawley said the need to tighten security came as a surprise and the changes were difficult to implement.
"It normally takes us about four weeks to roll out a change at a security checkpoint, and this one came about in a little bit more than four hours in the middle of last night," Hawley said.
Duane Woerth, president of the Air Line Pilots Association, said the government was overreacting. "They paralyzed the system with the hassle factor again," Woerth said.
During the first few hours of the alert, the TSA was taking toiletries away from flight crews, he said. "Then they said, 'This is stupid. We're taking toothpaste away from the guy who's going to fly the plane.' It didn't take them long to back down."
But Frank Cilluffo, director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University, said it makes sense to insert "uncertainty and randomness into the system so we can't let the adversary game the system."
Still, he said, coordination among agencies and the industry remains a problem.
Denis Breslin, spokesman for the American Airlines pilots union, faulted nagging communication shortcomings among intelligence, law enforcement and homeland security agencies.
"There's a whole lot of people making rules up right now, and until they get it all sorted out, every passenger is going to have to go through the nightmarish procedures that they're putting together right now," said Breslin.
David Mackett, a pilot who heads the Airline Pilots Security Alliance, said flight crews are treated as part of the problem.
"We're not happy that every time there's a threat we find out from the media, and that there's almost a complete vacuum of information when it comes to the air crews," Mackett said.
It was after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that box cutters and other sharp objects were banned, bulletproof cockpit doors installed and air marshals rushed into service.
And it was after Richard Reid, the confessed shoe bomber, tried to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight in December 2001 that security officials made passengers remove their shoes. Lighters were later banned from passenger cabins.
Members of Congress have for several years criticized the TSA for using 1970s-era X-ray technology to screen carry-on bags at security checkpoints.
Rafi Ron, former head of security at Israel's Ben Gurion Airport and now a security consultant in Washington, said part of the problem is that terrorists always try to exploit new vulnerabilities.
"Weapons and explosives are various and you can expect new types of weapons as well as tactics," Ron said.
Douglas Laird, an aviation security expert and former security chief for Northwest Airlines, said the plot described Thursday resembled a 1994-1995 attempt, codenamed "Bojinka," to blow up a dozen airliners simultaneously over the Pacific Ocean using liquid explosives smuggled onto planes in bottles of contact lens solution.
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On the Net:
Transportation Security Administration: http://www.tsa.gov
I feel for you. Next Saturday I have to fly into Dulles in Washington DC, then on to Frankfurt and then Kiev.
And I can't even bring a freakin' bottle of water for my 9+ hour flight across the Atlantic! Not to mention toothpaste so I can brush my choppers before I meet my wife in Kiev.
Muslims suck.
I disagree. In 1998, OBL issued a Declaration of War against all Americans everywhere, and called on Muslims all over the world to kill as many Americans as possible.
Anything short of our death does not give them what they want.
Ben Franklin correctly said "those who would sacrifice liberty in order to gain temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety".
I'm a fan of Ben Franklin, and in fact he and I even share the same birthday. But I think here he was wrong. It implies that maximum liberty is had with zero security, and that is clearly not the case.
I was going to do a one day trip to the coast on Saturday, but with all the BS, it takes about 2 hours off the amount of time I have on the ground, And I don't want to stay overnight.
The joys of flying standby....
The guy who flies the plane, should he want to crash it, will not be doing so with a tube of toothpaste.
Drug smugglers use condoms and similar containers.
The way I read the new policies, get used to the idea of the mangy dog look. I've been on a few of those long overseas flights, and the one common event is the line for the toilets, with everybody holding a dop kit or makeup kit in their hands, as the flight is nearing the destination.
Profile who? According to the news two of the suspects were British citizens who were recent conversions to Islam. So how do you propose to pick the two Muslim white guys out of a whole airplane full of white guys through profiling? Make everyone eat a pork chop before boarding?
>I would love to get a GMC Conversion Van. Something that's roomy but not too big.<
Go for it. Big vans are sitting on dealer lots right now. I looked at one (just tire kicking) and the salesman was doing everything he could to get us to take it off his hands.
Before you buy the GMC, though, look at these new Dodge Sprinters. They have tons of carrying capacity and they're diesel, so they last longer and get better mileage.
So the result of this latest attempted terrorist atrocity is that we can't bring toothpaste and deodorant with us onto the plane, thus ensuring that we all smell like muslime savages.
Yeah... there aren't any on my Christmas gift giving list either...
Good luck...
Our government would rather destroy the airline industry and put us all at more risk than be politically incorrect.
So we just let the majority slip thru as well and do nothing?
what do you propose?
What we're doing. Plots like this are not going to be prevented at the airport gate. They are going to be prevented through good solid police work and cooperation between countries where the terrorists operate, leading to arrests long before the terrorists get near a plane. Not by some $10 per hour TSA Rent-a-cop.
And when 'they' do succeed, I shall remember your comment. Thanks
Well just out of curiosity what would you do? Who would you profile? Would you keep every Arab-looking person off the plane? What defines Arab-looking? What about Asians? The largest Muslim country in the world is Indonesia. Think that keeping all Asians and Arab-looking guys off will do it? How about also banning every person with a British passport since the main source of terrorists seem to be from England these days? You think that would work? You tell me who to profile and what the percent chance you give it of succeeding. And why you think that will work better than what I suggested.
Terrorists exploit weakness. The weakness of profiling only dark-skinned men is that white men get through. And white women.
Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, is a white man. If the TSA focuses only on brown men, then the terrorist recruiters have everybody else as a potential pool of candidates.
I hear the same argument from others here. fine, just let the bulk go thru and we all will have to accept the consequences be it attacks or economicimpact or social upheaval.
side note, As long as we allow madrassas and mosques and universities to act as feeder/breeder factories, you may well be right, eventually profiling will yield little results, 'til then, to discount it as one of the tools to be used seems only to invite more attacks , not lessen the danger.
I have a sneaking feeling profiling is used , just not advertised as such. Thanks for bumping up the thread.
How about answering the question. You want to profile? Fine. Profile who?
from past history and including a majoirty of known perps to date.
young middle eastern males, for starters.
so you don't catch the new converts of other ethnic origin, you will likely be having a major impact regardless and hopeflly slowing or slighting the effort of the more readily persuaded to buy into the martyr angle.
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