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Feds Searching ALL U.S. Commerical Planes

C

Chad4Mac

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 20, 2002
299
0
Los Angeles
Check this out:

Authorities are searching every commercial airplane in the United States on Friday after someone left bags filled with claylike material, bleach and boxcutters on two Southwest Airlines flights, officials told Fox News.

Whoever left the bags on planes in Houston and New Orleans left notes that said the writer was concerned about security on airplanes. It is unclear when the bags were left on the planes.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,100413,00.html


Chad4Mac
 
Just goes to show

Humans are smart. Any system that is feasible can probably be gotten around. Even if they stop blades from getting on, someone will realize what he can do with a handful of change in the toe of a sock. Or something else. I can't imagine that we could be totally safe unless the airlines carry us onto the planes naked with our hands duct-taped to our ankles.
 
the only true solution is not to allow any carry on bags period! everything in the cargo hold. last night news reported that fbi was able to get things past security. so sorry that our freedoms are being denied by our govt and these fools called terrorists.
 
The interesting thing about this case is the fact that the person smuggled the bags onto the plane just to put a note in the bags warning us -- not to blow the thing up.

That takes a huge amount of balls to do this -- just to warn the TSA and/or prove a point. This guy is a coreboy!

In any event, this guy provided a service to the public by doing it. Maybe we'll find the loophole...


Chad4Mac
 
we have had a lot of lip service by,Bush,Ashcroft but are we really more secure?? or have they just grown the govt at our expense. i think we know the answer to that one. i wonder how many illegals have gotten into the country today???this just goes to show how stupid the airlines look, and our govt. again no carry on period. now all they have to do is check tennis shoes and diapers.
 
Originally posted by Dont Hurt Me
we have had a lot of lip service by,Bush,Ashcroft but are we really more secure?? or have they just grown the govt at our expense. i think we know the answer to that one. i wonder how many illegals have gotten into the country today???this just goes to show how stupid the airlines look, and our govt. again no carry on period. now all they have to do is check tennis shoes and diapers.
Click to expand...

Well, if by really more secure you mean no new airliners hitting buildings, then, yes, our airways are a bit more secure. Even when the terrorists highjacked the planes -- before the new security measures -- it was with box cutters, not bombs and guns. If this were to happan again, the terrorists wouldn't stand a chance; passengers would kill those f-ers.

I know that when I fly I feel a bit more secure, especially when the TSA is right there by the gates doing secondary screening. My only real worry about flying after 9/11 is if the plane is going to fall out of the sky like a stone.

I think that TSA has taken reasonable steps to secure saftey in our airports (just look at all the new long lines trying to get to the gates). There's definitely more that could be done, like no carry on; however, the incovience to the travelers doesn't justify eliminating it. There simply aren't enough people in the world trying to bypass security to blow up a plane. Elimanating carry-on is inefficient; no more purses, back packs, etc. on board would cost the airline millions and millions annually for no real benefits to the safety of the passengers.

I think that if you really want safe skies, you have to hire a specialized, educated work force to do the xray screening and backage handling. But, would you want to pay for that? It will be quite expensive...


Chad4Mac
 
This is not a good thing, since one of these planes came from Austin. I'm flying from Austin to Iowa tomorrow...

I feel so much better because of this guy now...
 
Originally posted by G4scott
This is not a good thing, since one of these planes came from Austin. I'm flying from Austin to Iowa tomorrow...

I feel so much better because of this guy now...
Click to expand...

I'm telling you: this guy has the eggs of steal!

I don't like flying on SW because the planes are so old and flown so hard. I feel much more comfortable on the JetBlue Airbus A320s.

I've flown SW many, many times and it's a decent airline, but the planes -- just too old. Time to upgrade!

Chad4Mac
 
Well, I'm flying United. It's a trip to a football game, and the only people on the plane are the band, some people with athletics, and people with $$$ who paid to go through the ex-student association.

I mean, it's good that the guy made a point about the security, but I'm sure he could've found a better way to do it, although this way, it'll get tons of exposure, which means they'll have to fix it soon, but it also lets others know about a possible vulnerability that they can use to their advantage...
 
Well being a pilot I guess I can talk from the inside on this one. Though I think we should make an effort to secure our airlines, sometimes it seems people can be unreasonable. A lot of the new security procedures where I'm training are simply stupid. For instance, everyone knows everyone and yet the dispatchers HAVE to ask for government ID. It just seems like out of all the new rules on air safety, a good 2/3 is just annoying and serve no practical purpose. If someone REALLY wants to blow up a plane, they'll figure something out. We should all just take in consideration the odds of something like this and weigh it with all the expense and inconvenience it would be to put in bomb-proof (if you could really make such a thing) cargo bins or surface-to-air counter measures on every aircraft. All you hear about on the news is the dangers of general aviation aircraft hitting nuclear power plants and enormous holes in our airline security. Well for one, even the largest GA aircraft hitting a nuclear reactor would amount to something similar to a bug hitting your windshield. All nuclear power plants are designed to withstand the impact of even the largest jet planes. Secondly, you can’t expect a perfect system. We seem to be piling on more and more regulations in aviation safety when we really should be evaluating the best solutions and going with it. It brings up a big red flag when people have to wait for hours in line to board a plane. Someone shoudl ask if there is a better solution out there than just throwing near strip-searching on top of X-ray, metal detectors, chemical sensors, etc. All this extra weight on air travel will only breed complacency on our part giving our enemies an even bigger hole to climb through. So to sum it up, we should all stop being irrational only to please the acrophobic public and do what we, in the aviation community, feel is the best solution.
 
This whole airport security seems windows based...

Instead of deciding which system is the best, and implementing it, we are just throwing one flawed system on top of another, and hoping the eventually the pathways through the flaws will become so confusing and hard to follow, that it'll stop those people with evil intents.
 
What concerns me is that we haven't hired skilled professional to check baggage. Once again Logan Airport is a laughing stock. Agents from the Department of Homeland Security were able to enter multiple gates at different checkpoints without dectection. They were able to carry on knives, guns, and bombs. The personnel in question were sent back for remedial training.
 
do you really need carry ons? seperate luggage from people. almost anything you allow on the plane can be made into a weapon if someone is that determined. look at that shoe bomber. This solves 90% of problem.
 
Originally posted by Dont Hurt Me
do you really need carry ons? seperate luggage from people. almost anything you allow on the plane can be made into a weapon if someone is that determined. look at that shoe bomber. This solves 90% of problem.
Click to expand...

Have the airlines improved on there record of lost luggage. I had always heard that anything that you really need and don't want lost, it's best to use carry on's.
 
Its a trade off:

We get: Uhh... a Security Presence

We Lose: The abality for people to wear shoes and wear watches without getting stopped by security.

'Sir What is in your watch... any hidden devices?'
Me: 'Err, just a regular watch, the face isn't special at all'
Guard: 'ok.'

Later in the day before getting on the plane I'm stopped 'randomly' asked to take off my shoes...

*blah*
 
Originally posted by CMillerERAU
All nuclear power plants are designed to withstand the impact of even the largest jet planes.
Click to expand...
While this is true of all US power plants, many plants built in other countries do not have containment domes.
 
Originally posted by Dont Hurt Me
do you really need carry ons? .
Click to expand...

Yes as a matter of fact most people do. I hate trusting critical documents to checked baggage- especially since I had a bag lost last week. It was checked in 5 hours before flight time and still ended up in chicago instead of orlando.

As anyone knows who has thought through security in a general sense the system depends on PEOPLE and nothing else. Every automatic system can be gamed if enough thought is applied. Checking to see if someone has a badge is rediculously less effective than the guard KNOWING the face of the person passing. In the absence of repetitive screening - something done every day- the next best is to identify the person in some sort of database and try try try to correlate the physical person to his behavior- measured in as many possible ways as can be imagined. This means having data collected and correlated that most people don't want in any central repository.
If this is not desired for essentially political reasons then removing the mechanism for doing harm is a distant third option. At present this is about the best that we can muster.
Using this approach it seems obvious that a determined terrorist will simply go to the next step and try to damage an airplane using something like an RPG. remember that all they have to do is damage it- it doesn't even have to be in the air! they will make the news and the economic warfare effect is essentially the same. This is a psychological war not a physical one.
We need to start asking what is the motivation of these terrorists. It seems fairly clear that the removal of their principle motivation may be orders of magnitude cheaper in terms of both money and lives than the armed camp approach. Right now that motivation surrounds our energy and political policies, basic human rights and an area of land so small and functionally insignificant that most US counties are bigger than it is and thousands of them have a greater economic impact. Both of these problems can be resolved PERMANENTLY with nearly trivial investment - if we have the will. Right now we and others are using emotional decision-making that has no effective utility in the 21st century. The degree to which this sort of sophomoric thinking is revealed in our and other countries' senior leadership is apalling. We can squander our resources (which are very finite - a fact never presented by politicians during this discussion and are not limited to merely money) and have the outcome be dominated by chance at some indeterminate future point or take control of the situation at its root cause and solve it- STARTING NOW.
In the bargain we might get shorter wait times at airports- but probably not.
 
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