Fears, real and imagined.
"Regardless of how many years we’re under the constant “orange alert,” the real chances of dying in a terrorist attack are slim to none. According to the AEI-Brookings Joint Center, even if there were one terrorist hijacking per week, your odds of perishing in such a conflagration would be just 135,000 to 1. Still, we go through the charade at the airport, grand theater orchestrated by the Orwellian-sounding Department of Homeland Security that’s aided by technology that looks like it’s working but still lets through 60% of undercover agents carrying fake bombs."
Dvice sometimes has amusing/interesting posts, but it's not very well written, I've noticed. For example in the above paragraph (which has a good point), "conflagration" is used as if it means "disaster" rather than "large destructive fire".
Man sometimes have sudden bursts of sanity. I wonder how long it will be before a major airport will realize that they can much more economical and competitive if they remove security checks totally.
9 comments:
I went to California last month through a course - so cleared international security at Amsterdam and Atlanta. At one point during the course I was taking, I went to grab my USB stick, which lives on my keychain. Lo and behold.... my jacknife was still attached. It's really useful for little stuff, though I've been told it could be deadly. *shrug* I wouldn't know. But that that, with its 4 cm blade, made it through customs..... what a waste of time.
I've always laughed at airport security globally, except leaving Heathrow. LHR seems to be the only place that took things seriously, this has been true since I started traveling in 1993.
My USB stick is a knife, they also have a blade-less version.
With the volume of traffic, and the advancement both in detection and evasion technologies they may just as well throw the towel in. As it is we are victims of terrorism every time we do something.
Can you imagine if there were no security procedures? There would be an overwhelming mandate from the public for improved safety every time something did go wrong.
Of course, I'll just say it's the media's fault. They stir up trouble "You will die if there is no security", "Big Brother IS Watching" etc etc.
As for competing? The only place I've heard of planes having competition would be NY to DC, where trains are down town to down town, and the planes, despite their airspeed, have greater turn around costs, and time to downtown impact. I hear some services used to sell the tickets on board for shorter gate time. The only other places I see flight competing against road and rail would be between other major metro areas in Europe.
Besides, the airport taxes and security fees are broken out separately, and it seems fuel is probably the major cost.
As for airports competing against other airports? How many areas does this truly impact?
All security personel (try to count their number when you are at an airport) would be rendered jobless, and the manufacturers of the x-ray machines might go bankrupt?
Are we sitting in a trap?
Or, as we say, the dog bites its own tail.
Yes, but the plane tickets would be cheap enough, they could afford to fly to China or India and get a job there.
As for the security businesses going bust. Hey, that's just like the "dot bomb" era, pun not intended. Still with the collapse of the securities industry, and the oil business at the same time...
If they did back down on security nationwide (esp city CCTV) what would Capt. Jack do?
Airports compete with "taking the car" and "using the phone or internet" or "staying at home". I know I'd see my sisters back in Denmark more often if it didn't take two hours to get through the airport.
"Taking the car" competes with "Fly drive" not just flight. I will drive in-state for vacation as it would otherwise be a very expensive (4 persons remember) flight and car rental. Typical time in airport for a domestic flight is about 90 minutes, though I use quieter regionals, and have trimmed it to 40 minutes in the recent past. A business trip in-state planes have no competition, you do fly.
Vacation out of state - the cost in days travel is prohibitive (4 day drive to DC with motels each night), so again flight is the only credible option. Sure if the flight was half the price I'd go more often, but even $600 travel starts to fade compared to the $200 day support costs of food, accommodations, admissions (Theme park, about $100 for 4, museum/aquarium $60) and souvenirs.
Just seems to me that if you make things easier and faster, business will improve.
No security = even more chaos. No security = opportunity. Man has always taken advantage of opportunity, good or bad. Agreed, modern airport security is cumbersome, flawed, statistically unsupportive. Airport security, for all its flaws, works because of (bad) mans irrational fear of being caught. Take away security and open the floodgates. Agreed. without it you could travel more, making better use of time.
Sadly, the fears arn't imagined. There are irrational folk just waiting to take advantage, 24/7. Yes, security is not very good - but it serves a (thin) purpose. Once again, Mans clumsy way of dealing with man.
Like a bicycle chain, keeps an honest man honest...
BTW, I prefer to have some security, it does prevent some of the irrational behavior
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