THE SUPPLE MINDS OF THE TSA WILL DESTROY AMERICA’S AIRLINES
TSA: Nothing Can Stand Between Us And Mindlessly Destroying The American Airline Industry
An airline industry looking to “bounce back” in 2010 by bleeding $11 billion. A tourism industry coping with alienated Western travelers after Congress, at the behest of restaurant and hotel lobbies, imposed a $10 fine on incoming travelers to promote “Vegas-style tourism.” And now this series of bizarre overreactions to the Detroit terrorism attack, which is being greeted with something less than fanfare on travel blogs and forums. Quoth the managing editor of several valuable online travel properties: “I just need the airlines to be honest with me: ‘Do you guys want to be in business or not? If not, just let me know so I can start booking my cruise.'”
An Islamic male between the ages 18 and 45 was granted a visa despite known terrorist ties, because for some reason people on the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment list are “are not necessarily on the no-fly list.” He smuggled contraband through multiple security checkpoints, moved about the plane unmolested despite likely being visibly high as a kite, and tried to blow up the flight during its descent.
The supple minds at TSA brought their incisive logical skills to bear on this near-disaster, abstracted the relevant principles, and concluded: what we need to do is ban tourists from peeing during the last hour of the flight! Ditto – per FlyerTalk – for blacking out in-flight GPS maps and prohibiting pilots from announcing things “if you look out to your left you’ll see…” Because if terrorists don’t know where they are they can’t be terrorists! Next we’ll learn that timers and watches are verboten.
This makes even less sense than the time the TSA and the FBI tried to legally persecute an American teenager for pointing out gaping holes in the no-fly list system. It even makes less sense than hiring digital document managers who release non-redacted “redacted” PDFs before unblinkingly spouting nonsense during TSA’s subsequent whitewash.
You can’t buy analytical skill like this. You certainly can’t teach them. As a manager you just have to hope you’re lucky enough to hire people born with them:
As part of the increased security, passengers on a flight Saturday from Brussels, Belgium, to Dulles Airport in Virginia were not allowed to leave their seats for the last hour of the flight, a traveler told CNN… the flight crew told the passengers that they had to remain in their seats with their seatbelts fastened and couldn’t have any items, such as pillows or blankets, covering their laps; everything was stowed away. Passenger Johnny McDonald… saw officials X-ray milk parents had brought for infants and saw many people patted down. “They X-rayed the milk I don’t know how many times,” McDonald said. “And then they took the milk out and sampled each and every bottle of the milk. I’ve never seen that before.”
Last time it was a terrorist trying to blow up his shoes during the middle of the flight. This time it was a terrorist trying to blow up his underwear during the descent. Next time it’ll be a terrorist blowing up something else during some other part of the flight. The issue isn’t the mechanism and it’s not the timing. It’s the terrorist.
But we’re not allowed to recognize that so instead we x-ray baby milk over and over again.
Not for nothing, but I’m sitting here in the tiny Budapest international terminal and El Al just set up their own security line in their corner of the lobby. Yes, you can tell the difference. I bet El Al could even design a system where travelers would be allowed to safely carry Diet Cokes through security. Which reminds me: now that the liquid ban is demonstrably useless rather than just obviously useless, can I get my shaving cream back?
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