The Beginning Of The End Of Air Travel?

ROMULUS, Mich. (AP) - An attempted terrorist attack on a Christmas Day flight began with a pop and a puff of smoke - sending passengers scrambling to tackle a Nigerian man who claimed to be acting on orders from al-Qaida to blow up the airliner, officials and travelers said. (WTOP)

Before we start bashing the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which you know I have very little trouble doing, we need to look at some facts:

1) The flight originated in Amsterdam. That is in Europe for the average, geographically challenged American, and they follow a different security regime than the TSA follows here in the United States. I would normally have said it is more stringent and in reality it probably is.

2) This nut job carried an explosive in a small quantity through a checkpoint. In actuality he could probably have carried it through a US checkpoint just as easily as they screen for metal and large concentrations of explosives, which does not sound like what he was carrying

3) It does not take even the most inventive mind to circumvent the security procedures. It is pointless to point out how silly the 3oz rule is and how easy it is to circumvent if you really want to. Similarly, it is easy, if you are willing to go down with the aircraft, to bring down an airplane with the basic tools on board. Again, I do not need to go into details - any good search of the web and a couple of episodes of Mythbusters can tell you all you need to know.

Now, if we follow the bouncing ball, I am afraid it goes to some pretty ugly places. To start with, if you are flying to anywhere over the next 48-72 hours, I would tell you to expect worse security procedures than you have seen since they banned liquids at the checkpoints. If you normally allow two hours for security, you might want to make that four hours. And if you are traveling with inexperienced travelers, might I suggest the train?

What is more depressing about this breach, is not that it happened. TSA has been dinged for security breaches almost weekly it would seem by the GAO and the Congress and their own Inspector General, but that it happened on a plane, coming into the United States and it made the press, so now not only does TSA have to do something about it in the way of making sure it never happens again, but so does every other security agency in the Western world. And what do you think they are going to do to prevent this sort of thing from happening again?

If past history is any indication, it cannot be anything that the traveling public will consider positive.

- Following September 11, 2001, the Federal Government decided that the minimum wage, minimally screened private security screeners at the Nation's airports were not doing a good enough job, so they were replaced with a brand new bureaucracy of minimum wage, minimally screened federal employees. Forget for the moment that the hijackers were, up until the moment of the actual attack not violating any provisions of the security checkpoints. Forget for the moment that in the late 1980s it had been recommended by the NTSB and the FAA that all cockpits be locked from take-off until landing and the recommendations where never implemented. But hey, it improved security so it must be a good thing!

- For Reed, the shoe bomber they took away our shoes. Now we have to remove them and send them through the x-ray machine. Not a real problem if you are in good shape and wear slip-ons when you travel (and frankly, can you afford not to be spry and wear slip-ons to travel anymore?). If you are slightly infirm, the process of getting out of your shoes and back into them can cause backups. But hey, it improved security so it must be a good thing!

- For the liquid bombers, in the UK they actually went so far as to ban carry-on baggage for a short period of time, but the end result was that you could no longer carry liquid of more than three ounces per bottle per gallon bag through the check point. Of course, this also resulted in higher food prices behind security for the vendors and the now irreversible checked bag fee that you could go so far as to claim is sexist because most men can travel with a tube of toothpaste and some shaving cream and call it done while most women cannot travel with less than three ounces of anything, and since most premium manufactures have not made travel sized bottles, women are kind of in a bind. But hey, it improved security so it must be a good thing!

- Lately, they have introduced back-scatter x-ray technology at some airports. These are the x-ray machines that essentially render you naked for a group of observers in a back room somewhere and verify that you are not carrying some sort of unknown powder strapped to your leg. Of course, these devices have a number of people upset, especially those who are concerned about their modesty, among other things, and those that are wondering, with good reason what happens to the images afterwords. While TSA assures us they are not going to keep them, anyone who believes this should read up on what the State Department is currently doing with those who snooped on passport applications of celebrities and other famous people. How much for a back scatter picture of Angelina Jolie? But hey, it improves security so it must be a good thing!

So where do we go from here? Assuming the US federal government can find a couple of billion dollars, and the companies that make back scatter machines can churn them out fast enough, that is a very good question. But here are some scenarios.

Ban it all: This is perhaps the most extreme form of response, but I am not discounting that it is being discussed at some levels. This is the Aeroflot model if you will. All passengers will be prohibited from taking anything on board the aircraft, including but not limited to personal clothing. You will be forced to strip down to bare skin, put on some sort of modesty covering and proceed to the waiting airplane. You will be allowed, in fact, enforced, to carry your identification with you, but everything else, wallet, jewelery, pants, hats, and shoes will go via some other mode. Do not expect to receive them at the end of your journey. And do not expect the airlines to start feeding you again either.

Ban Carry On: It is more likely that you will be forced to undergo some form of invasive examination, like a backscatter with a follow up cavity search, but you will be allowed to wear your own clothes onto the plane. You will not be permitted any carry on however. While this is a likely scenario, it is also the death knell of the airline business. The majority of money made by airlines is in business travel, and business travelers, not permitted to take laptops and roller bags will not travel. And let's face it, there are things I would not entrust to the goons who load the planes either and would only take by carry on. If that privilege was taken away, I would be looking for other ways to travel, or I just would not do it. Imagine what would happen to places like Hawaii who rely on the airplane for their tourists? Or Alaska?

Tighter Screening: I cannot imagine how much tighter the screening can get. Really. It is about as impersonal as it can get. It has become so arduous to travel by air that I refuse to do it unless I am being paid to. It is not worth the pain and suffering, the constant waiting and the scoping as if I were a criminal and the person searching me was the good guy. Based on the IG reports from TSA, you would not let the screeners at most airports look after your children, much lest trust them to pick out the good guy from the bad guy.

You cannot kill an ism Terrorism is as old as man and will continue as long as there is a cause to fight for and people to fight for it. Sadly, while the world has shrunk to the point that data can circumnavigate the globe in a matter of seconds, it will be decades, if ever, before the human population is able to travel freely from point to point like they used to. And that is the sad result.

UPDATE: I had forgotten about the stay in your seat rule, since it was only enacted when flying in or out of National Airport here in DC, but even then it was thirty minutes on either end...not an hour.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Some airlines are telling passengers that new security regulations prohibit them from leaving their seats beginning an hour before landing.(AP)

TORONTO — New restrictions on U.S.-bound flights are causing "very significant" delays and headaches for travelers at Canada's busiest airport Sunday...Among the stricter regulations are passengers are to have nothing on the lap and no moving around the flight cabin in the final hour before landing and only one carry-on is bag allowed.CP 24

New Security Rules Could Limit In-Flight Laptop Time December 26th, 2009 | by Adam Ostrow49 Airplane WiFi might be getting more prevalent on planes, but the amount of time you’re actually allowed to use your laptop and take advantage of it might be about to take a significant hit....The TSA has not posted specific new guidelines publicly yet, writing only that they are “working closely with federal, state and local law enforcement on additional security measures, as well as our international partners on enhanced security at airports and on flights.”

However, it appears that at least one of those measures involves no personal belongings on one’s lap in the last hour of flight, as a statement on Air Canada’s website reads:

“New rules imposed by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration also limit on-board activities by customers and crew in U.S. airspace that may adversely impact on-board service. Among other things, during the final hour of flight customers must remain seated, will not be allowed to access carry-on baggage, or have personal belongings or other items on their laps.” Mashable

Let's be clear here. So far, these new rules are for those poor souls traveling into the United States from other countries. If you are coming in from Europe or the Far East, saying in your seat for the last hour of the flight, while annoying, is not that much of a hardship. You have already had your work time and the battery on your laptop is already dead. But from countries like Canada and Mexico, it will but a significant crimp in traveling. I have already heard comments from travelers with children who are rethinking their trips to American destinations. Let's face it - if you have kids under the age of 18, keeping them in their seats is a full time occupation. Keeping them in their seats and not allowing them to have anything in their lap for more than half the flight is a non-starter. And remember, keeping them in their seat means not letting them go to the bathroom. There are many in the traveling public that are over the age of 18 that cannot be held to that rule, much less newly potty trained toddlers.

The point here is this. If these rules go into effect, it will not improve safety one little bit, and will make an already arduous travel experience that more difficult, which will have people start rethinking how they spend their vacation dollars and where they spend them. Look at what the slumping economy and the fall out from the Wall Street Fat Cats did to Las Vegas. Now start looking at places like Orlando and Anaheim. Do you think Disney and Universal Studios theme parks can survive if people will not travel to visit them? And that is the sort of traffic that is easy to gauge. This will impact business travel, convention travel, which is already hurting as anyone who has been to a convention lately can tell you, and casual travel.

I can only begin to wonder how many phones are ringing this morning with the following dialogue:

"Hello, your favorite tourist destination."
"Hello, this is Bill Smith, I want to cancel my reservation for the week of the 12th."
"Certainly Mr. Smith, can we reschedule that for you?"
"No, thank you."
"Alright and why are you canceling your reservation?"
"Because I don't feel like putting up with the airline security."

If you think I am kidding, keep an eye on the attendance records for Disney World over the next few months, and listen to the deals being offered by the Chamber of Commerce in places like Washington, DC, Honolulu Hi, Los Angeles, Ca, and San Diego, Ca. I do not think it will take long to register.

Traffic is getting worse.

I live in what the Texas University transportation survey claims is the second worst traffic congested area in the nation. In other surveys, one of our neighbourhoods has one of the worst commutes with an average time of 45 minutes. I would love a commute that short, and I live five miles closer.

I currently work in Washington DC, so I do not drive that much anymore. I take the train and on average my door-to-door commute can run anywhere from 90 to 120 minutes depending on a number of factors. The advantage to this is I can work or rest or read over 70 minutes of the trip. This makes the travel bearable.

Today, in fact as I write this, I am not taking the train but driving. I left the house at 8 and in 32 minutes, I have traveled a little less than 5 miles. No accidents, no sun glare, no snow, no wet roads. The road is a basic artery with a half a dozen stoplights and I am still four miles from the interstate and a mile from another major artery. And this is a normal traffic day. There are no reported accidents, yet traffic is crawling.

The problems are complex. There are too many cars all going the same way and too few roads that go that way. Unlike California, Virginia only has a few major arteries, and even fewer feeder roads. Neighbourhoods are mostly dead ends, so large volumes of vehicles are dumped straight onto the main thoroughfare which handles both local and through traffic.

Second, there a few options to driving. I once answered a survey that asked "If it was illegal to drive to work on code red air quality days, what would I do?" I told the survey person that it was a null question. At the time I was working in the Tyson's Corner area and there was only one way to get to work. My survey choices were ride a bike (unsafe on NoVA roads), take public transit (no local link from my enclave to the nearest hub that could get me there) or walk (also unsafe and impractical given the distances). If you are fortunate enough to work in DC and live in close proximity to a limited number of transportation hubs, then getting to work has options, but few are quite so lucky.

One argument that is often put forward by those that have a short view is "move closer to your job." This is a flawed argument on several levels. First, it assumes you can afford to live in the area where you work or you want to live in the area where you work. There are a number of factors that go into choosing a home and I would argue that location in proximity to shopping and quality of schools is just as important if not more so as commute distance to work.

The second flaw assumes either that you will work for the same company your entire career, that your company will not move, or move you. In the modern business world, these are all wild cards, and with most people working for a minimum of three companies throughout their life on average it is unreasonable to expect that you would move each time unless there are over-riding concerns. In the Metro DC area where job transitions are more prevalent, the argument unravels completely.

One of the issues with traffic is the costs. Most of these costs are hidden, buried deep in budgets and lost in corporate financial systems. In 1990, there were 190 million vehicles registered in the United States and that was 23 million more than the number of licensed drivers with an estimated cost of over $300 billion dollars not born by drivers in the way of fees and taxes. At almost 2 percent of the total area of the United States paved over, it costs almost $200 million per day just to maintain the road networks, with more than 250,000 miles considered to be in poor condition. And yet there does not seem to be enough road surfaces as we are sitting in traffic at rush hour. And rush hour is even a misnomer as it is not almost a constant migration starting in the wee hours of the morning and running through almost the dark of the night. Traffic is so heavy that even routine maintenance cannot be done in safety or effectively enough to last.

There are solutions to the problem, but the solutions require political will and a sacrifice of such a monumental level that it is more likely we will run out of oil before we give up the automobile we have become so enamored with.

Construction Zones

Can someone please explain to me why every Department of Transportation (or, more correctly, their contractors) have to declare miles of road as an "active construction zone" when 1) it is not and 2) they are only working in less than a 100 feet of space?

On the drive back today, we encountered at least a dozen of these so-called "active construction zones," each more than several miles long, single lane, and slow speed. In each case, there was no work being done (and as near as I could tell there was no work scheduled for this or any other decade, let alone building season), and when there was evidence that work might, at one point in the far past or the near future be done, it was in a space that a man could walk comfortably to the port-a-potty, in other words several dozen yards. A mile, maximum would have sufficed to protect the workers (if there had been any) and not foobar the entire road for miles in each direction. Fortunately, there were only two zones where the traffic came to a screeching, snarled mess, and in both cases it was on the Canadian side of the journey and the work zone was active. It took us a half-an-hour to go a mile or so while everyone stopped to watch the workmen pour concrete...but rubbernecking is a different issue.