Posted on 08/11/2006 5:43:27 AM PDT by jjm2111
CHICAGO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Tighter restrictions on carry-on luggage, including bans on liquids, will disrupt air travel for at least several days and make it even more of a headache for passengers already sick of crowded planes and long lines, experts said.
U.S. security officials banned passengers from carrying any liquids onto planes after British officials said they foiled a plot to bomb flights to the United States on Thursday.
The new restrictions were sure to cause major disruptions for at least two or three days at airport security checkpoints as screeners scour carry-on bags for drinks, hair gels and lotions, experts said.
"They've got to search everything extremely carefully right now," said Joe Schwieterman, transportation expert at DePaul University. "Any time you impose a new rule there's instant chaos, but things settle down in a few weeks."
He said the increased security will be especially taxing for passengers already fed up with long lines and crowded planes during the peak summer travel season.
The heightened concern about travel safety triggered renewed calls for improved security, which can be laxly enforced by airlines and airports loathe to inconvenience passengers.
(Excerpt) Read more at today.reuters.com ...
Over-inflating your tires makes it a drier trip. :-)
What good would that do? The contents could still be some Jihad Joe concoction instead of what it says on the label -- at most, it would need a bit of dye to make the color match (just in case the TSA drone recognizes one specific product out of thousands).
Nobody's taking your phone away from you.
They all could just a few years ago, before people began to be born with cell phones and Bluetooth headsets protruding from their ears.
Humanity got along just fine for thousands of years before cell phones were ever even dreamed of. A couple hours on a plane is not the end of the world's economy.
Er, they are nonexistent. Hint: What does the "P" stand for?
Humanity got along just fine for thousands of years before cell phones were ever even dreamed of. A couple hours on a plane is not the end of the world's economy.
Nobody's taking your phone away from you.
As of now, all three of those can be brought on board the aircraft in carry-on. The airlines, and the government, know that forcing business people to put laptops in checked bags, to say nothing of cell phones, means that some percentage of them will no longer fly.
I would never check a laptop or a cell phone. I told my boss that today, and he said he agrees and that, if security requires checking those items, just plan to do more business over the internet and the telephone.
Flight attendants do NOT keep up with that.
Yes they do. All you have to do is ask.
However, if you don't want to pester the flight attendant, simply hydrate before boarding. Drink 12 or more ounces of water before boarding.
Then have another 8 ounces when the flight attendant comes around.
On longer flights they usually come around a second time, but you can also either press the call button to get assistance, of it the fasten seat belts light is off, walk to the area they work from and ask for more.
The air in airplanes is kept relatively dry. Lower humidity is better for the aircraft, and the relatively low cabin pressure does dry you out as well (they are pressurized to about the same pressure you would experience at 8000 feet).
I usually to carry one or bottles of water in my carry-on baggage. However, I do that for convenience sake, not because the flight attendants won't bring me more water if I ask. I only rarely open one of those bottles on the plane because I don't want to have to visit the on plane bathroom. I use them to rehydrate once I get off of the plane.
For me, the irritating thing would be to have to do without having hand lotion in my carry-on, especially in the winter time.
I would also be trying to figure out if a note from my eye doctor would allow me to carry on eye drops if I had Lasik done on my eyes recently rather than many years ago.
However, since I know the current rules, I'd make sure to put on hand lotion before heading to the airport, and use a whole disposable vial of eye rewetting drops before going through security if I couldn't carry them on the plane.
Hopefully these rules will be a short term inconvenience.
This is not even the first time there has been some form of ban on carrying liquids on a plane, at one point you couldn't carry on unsealed bottles, but that restriction was dropped at some point.
And there is no threat that a terrorist might bring an empty bottle through security, then find something dangerous in the secure gate area to threaten security. If so, maybe the authorities should not leave poisonous or explosive fluids around the gate area.
There are a huge number of different companies and service contractors bringing different things into an airport terminal.
Airport security cannot check every pallet of bottled beverages or every truck bringing in food service items for the restaurants that exist in an airport terminal.
They do screening of the workers, but controlling every source off fluids coming into an airport terminal well enough to be sure someone could not smuggle something in isn't really possible.
Normally the threat seems low enough that it doesn't make sense to maintain a restriction on carrying liquids on a plane, however since there is a known threat of people planning to smuggle on explosives that way, placing additional restrictions on bringing liquids on the plane makes sense while that threat is being evaluated.
There are a huge number of different companies and service contractors bringing different things into an airport terminal.
Airport security cannot check every pallet of bottled beverages or every truck bringing in food service items for the restaurants that exist in an airport terminal.
They do screening of the workers, but controlling every source off fluids coming into an airport terminal well enough to be sure someone could not smuggle something in isn't really possible.
So drive then, I haven't had to step foor into a plane for any domestic travel in 3 years and I avoid it like the plague for any trip less than 1000 miles.
Well for pleasure travel, I leave the US. I can do almost all the business across a wire.
The stories I read talked about them using a false bottom in the bottles. The top would be the actual product and the bottom the explosive.
In case they were required to drink the concoction in order to prove it was harmless.
Hiding a bladder on their person does seem reasonably simple.
Hiding it in the luggage lining wouldn't hide it from the xray machine as your luggage goes through security. The density of liquids shows up differently on the machine than the materials in the luggage.
There have been suggestions of using low power, but simple xray type machines to scan people as they walk though security as well as luggage, but that got a lot of people very upset very quickly.
It was more an issue of offending people's modesty rather than invading their privacy in the form of an unreasonable search, though the two are definitely related topics.
So, all this ridiculousness will simply force terrorists to be a hair more clever.
True. However, if causing them to rethink their plans throws them off, upsets their timetable, and possibly causes them to make a mistake, it may be worth it.
This is more a matter of doing what they can to in the face of an roughly identified imminent threat, rather than a solid long, term plan to address this issue.
The is a reactive step to a specific situation, rather than a well planned out proactive step. Hopefully, the short term, reactive measures will be replaced with better long term measures (or simply removed if they aren't really useful, but a long term solution isn't needed or isn't practical.
You see, if they are really motivated, they will succeed now and then, with little correlation. The real question is whether a couple hundred free citizens will be killed, or whether a couple hundred compliant sheep will be killed.
You're just taking the whole free vs sheep thing to seriously. Maybe a better way of saying it is that I think you are looking at things too rigidly.
These are relatively minor inconveniences, that while admittedly far, far from a solid defense, they are reasonable steps to take to reduce the danger in response to reports of an imminent threat.
Yes, terrorists can work around these measures, but working around them may not be possible or practical within the time frame they have planned for their attack, and the measures may throw them off.
(Keeping in mind that 40,000 people are killed in vehicle crashes in the US each year.)
People's fears are not rational. Flying is generally safer than driving these days, however people fear flying more than driving.
The fear of flying after 9/11 seriously damaged our economy.
It drastically damaged the airline industry, and made a great many people choose not to fly out of fear. The sudden drop in passengers made the airline industry horribly inefficient and drove up costs.
Businesses rely on being able to move people around the country quickly and efficiently. They need to be able to get salesmen and technical people to their customers quickly and efficiently.
We need a healthy airline industry.
The added hassle of security also hurts the industry and the economy, but not nearly as much as the lack of faith in the safety of the airline industry.
It doesn't matter that airplanes still have a much better safety record than driving, what matters is which people fear more and which people trust more.
Therefore, restoring people's faith is often more important than improving safety, because as you mentioned in reality flying is already safer.
I'd rather be strip searched and forced to wear a Tyvek jumpsuit while flying than to be forced to travel without a phone.
I didn't see anything in the new restrictions from the TSA that banned cell phones (other than banning their use on the plane itself). I'm not sure I understand what you are saying here.
I'm really pissed off.
Well, I'll try and make my statements in a polite fashion so I don't needlessly add to that.
If continued, this while have a BAD effect on the economy.
Agreed. This isn't a reasonable long term restriction, because it's too easy to work around. They need to figure out a better way to address this issue.
You only wand people when the metal detector goes off.
Toddlers shouldn't be setting off the metal detector. If they are something strange is going on, or their parents weren't paying attention and the kid picked up something they shouldn't have.
Little old ladies? Terrorists tend to be young and stupid (brainwashed). Little old ladies would appear to be among the least likely to be terrorists. However, they also are among the people I would think would be most likely to ignore regulations and carry something through security for a nice young man they never met before.
So if they set off the metal detector, I think it's wise to ask them a few questions politely as possible, and possible run the wand over them quickly to figure out what is going on.
However, I've stood in a lot of airport security lines since 9/11, and I can't say I've seen an old woman taken aside and wanded other than when they were doing the silly procedure of taking a couple people at "random" and wanding them and searching their carry-on.
Even then I think I only saw it once.
Instead, I seemed to get picked for that little screening about 50% of the time.
I quickly learned to wear a belt with a plastic buckle, and put my change and keys in my carry-on luggage.
I wore shoes that were easy to slip on and off.
I answered their questions, politely and clearly.
It was a rather silly system that I'm glad they did away with, but after about the fourth time I learned how to make it a short and painless process.
Have my ID ready.
Take off my watch, put my wallet and it in the basket.
Slip off my shoes.
Stand where they told me with my hand out from my sides.
Answer a few simple questions with clear and direct answers.
Keep my carry-on bag reasonably organized.
The screening was quick and painless.
It makes a lot more sense to do such screening on people that have done something to generate suspicion rather than have them be completely random.
However, the process is quick and simple as long as you pay attention and cooperate.
I've heard WASP used for White, Anglo-Saxon Person. However, since it appears that Protestant is what the P normally represents, you are correct. My mistake. :)
Whine whine. Good grief people, they were going to murder thousands!
And we're supposed to be inconvenienced for that excuse?!
Gee, you're right. I bet there's always going to be some way to work around any restrictions they come up with. We should just give up hope and remove all the restrictions. Maybe we should even hand everyone a small bomb when they get on the plane so everyone is fully aware that any illusions they have of safety are hollow. /sarcasm
These are temporary restrictions in response to a specific threat which they have reason to believe is imminent.
These restrictions are not sufficient to prevent every possible way that someone could smuggle a liquid explosive on a plane.
However, they do have a reasonable chance of forcing terrorists who were planning something in the next couple weeks, to delay and adjust their plans. That gives the government more opportunities to catch them.
Throwing off their plans at the last moment increases the chance they will make a mistake that alerts authorities.
These restriction don't make a lot of sense long term. Restrictions on carrying on unsealed bottles of liquids existed not long after 911, but had been removed.
However, as a short term response to make what may have been a relatively simple task a significantly harder one, the restrictions are pretty reasonable ones.
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