Posted on 09/12/2001 11:30:51 PM PDT by Lizavetta
Turning American airports and airplanes into an extended police state which maximally distrusts their own customers is the single stupidest thing the industry can do. For one thing, people just won't fly the planes as often. People will drive, instead. Or they won't travel at all. They will vote with their feet. There are a great number of us in the country already who refuse to fly, or fly very rarely, for two reasons: one, we don't like being treated like Soviet citizens instead of American citizens, and two, we know the security measures are a joke.I've already cancelled a trip I was planning next month. I will not show up 2 hours early for the flight. And I won't fly without my trusty knife. And if the airline tries to refuse to refund my fare, they can expect a big fight. The only way I'll fly is if they honor the conditions in place when I bought the ticket. I will fight for a refund.
It's a shame that these regulations are being put into place. There's a lot of places I flew to on business that I can drive to in 4-6 hours. If the flight is an hour, and I have to allow 2 hours or more for the anal probes and complete search of my underwear and toothbrushes, I'll just drive. It's more convenient to leave when I want instead of when the airline flight is scheduled. That's worth another hour or two.
This is going to kill the short hop commuter airlines. Any flights on routes less than 400 miles will probably shut down within a few months. These aren't worth the trouble, even to business travelers.
I was under the impression that baggage containing a declared firearm CANNOT be labeled as such. Someone please correct me if I am wrong -- am searching for a source, but if this is an error, it damages the credibility of the article.
I was under the impression that baggage containing a declared firearm CANNOT be labeled as such. Someone please correct me if I am wrong -- am searching for a source, but if this is an error, it damages the credibility of the article.I'm not sure what the federal regulations are (or whether they've been changed for "security"). I know that Delta requires that you check the bag with a firearm. You must have the rifle or shotgun or pistol in a hard sided, locked case, and you have to sign some special paperwork, declaring that the case contains a gun, that the gun is unloaded. I believe that you have to show the agent that the gun is unloaded (take it out of the case and show that the magazine is out or empty, or whatever depending on the type of gun) when you check the bag. Then, they watch you lock the case to make certain that it's locked. There's no question that some (low wage) airline employees know which bags have guns in them.
Increasing security is fine in the short-term, but long-term it's just like gun control. You prevent any honest person from defending themselves, while the dishonest ones continue to find ways around any regulations in place. Forcing everyone on a plane to carry a knife would be a better measure than not allowing anyone to do so.
First, the events of Tuesday were not typical hijacking's. They were suicides. Secondly, the best deterent to hijackings in general (which we have very, very few of) would be to have SECURITY PERSONEL on each flight in combination with tight physical security at the airports.
In this case, one person with a gun or a tazer on each of these flights would have prevented any of these planes from being taken over. However, the federal government in it's infinite wisdom could not find the money out of a 2 trillion dollar budget to provide security to more than a handful of flights, nor could it see the clues that pointed to this type on incident taking place.
Let's face it, the federal government is incompetent in just about everything that it does and is indirectly responsible for these events.
---max
They're pretty good at taking our money and wasting our money.
Now others who were going to fly have called and wanted to ride with me.
There goes the airline industry customer base! Soon, we won't need the FAA bureaucrats who came up with these stupid policies as there won't be an airline industry to regulate.
I guess there might be some good to come out of this afterall.
How can you say this? Did this deter the b@st@rds the committed Tuesday's atrocity? Of course not. They couldn't care less about "eluding authorities" They planned on suicide along with mass murder.
For that matter it doesn't deter a lot of ordinary street crime. Most criminals have a long record. This implies that they have failed to elude authorities repeatedly. This never seems to do much in the way of deterence.
I travel on United with firearms frequently. Same precautions as Delta, but the "firearms" tag is to be placed
with the gun inside the baggage. Federal Air Reg (FARS) 108 is the governing regulation.
That said, the rest of the article, IMO, was on target and put forth a number of points that really need to be emphasized over and over -- until the "security experts" employed by the government, airlines, and airports get the message.........
HOTLINK ==>> AIRLINE SAFETY- Freeper suggestions- Do's and Don't's
We want the very cheapest airline fare, but don't think about what is being cut to allow that cheap fare to exist.
Now we know.
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