Baggage meltdown AGAIN in PHL...

[PBI2FLL]

:down: Who/what are we going to blame it on this time? This is friggin out of control, embarrassing and I'm tired of dealing with pissed off customers!

 

[mga707]

:down: Who/what are we going to blame it on this time? This is friggin out of control, embarrassing and I'm tired of dealing with pissed off customers!

Isn't a baggage 'meltdown' pretty much inevitable given a suddenly much greater percentage of pax checking bags (thanks TSA!) and an inadequate staffing situation to begin with?

I'm frankly surprised that there haven't been more such 'meltdowns' at hubs throughout the country, regardless of airline. Or maybe PHL is just the harbinger of what's to come...

 

[ilg30/7]

The TSA is charged with keeping our aviation system secure, not with making the workdays of airline employees easier.

Think our jobs are tougher now? Had the plot that was foiled not been thwarted, its likely we would have had another shutdown of the aviation system and fallout similar to, if not worse than, 9/11. Not to mention the tremendous loss of life.

Having been through that once, I have no desire to ever go through it again.

Sometimes we should count our blessings.

 

[mga707]

The TSA is charged with keeping our aviation system secure,

...and they do it SO WELL...(sarcasm dripping)

 

[ilg30/7]

Are you under the impression that it is somehow easy to balance the needs of a robust aviation system with the absolute requirement that it be safe, first and foremost?

Did you have any idea prior to the past week that something as innocuous as a bottle of gatorade could be used as an explosive?

Monday morning quarterbacking is easy. Tell me where the next terrorist threat on the aviation system is going to come from. Then tell me how we are going to stop it without grinding the system to a halt.

That is what they are charged with.

 

[mga707]

Are you under the impression that it is somehow easy to balance the needs of a robust aviation system with the absolute requirement that it be safe, first and foremost?

Did you have any idea prior to the past week that something as innocuous as a bottle of gatorade could be used as an explosive?

Monday morning quarterbacking is easy. Tell me where the next terrorist threat on the aviation system is going to come from. Then tell me how we are going to stop it without grinding the system to a halt.

That is what they are charged with.

You CANNOT stop all terrorist threats without grinding the system to a halt--many who have flown since Thursday would assert that the grinding noises are already getting louder.
I'm sure there are many other combinations of items an inventive terrorist could use to blow up a plane that are not (yet) banned. My view is that at some point you have to stop being ridiculous and go with the percentages.
Yes, a minutely small percentage of commercial flights will become statistics. It's inevitable. And, no, there is no way to get around that without killing the allegedly "robust' system we now have. So learn to live with it, in my opinion.

Also, FWIW, I've always thought that the weeklong domestic aviation shutdown following 9/11 was the WORST possible response, and was EXACTLY what the Islamofascist scumbags wanted. Some, or even most, of the system should have been kept running, regardless of the cost, so as not to give those scumbags the satisfaction they got...IMHO.

Anyway, back to the ever-worsening PHL baggage SNAFU...

 

[ilg30/7]

So that means the TSA should not respond to intelligence about what these people want to do to our aircraft? Throw out any and all countermeasures and simply sacrifice that minute percentage of flights that will be lost?

Public perception MUST be that the aviation system is safe. We saw what happened after 9/11 when a minute portion of flights were hijacked and slammed into buildings. Demand fell off a cliff. Thousands of layoffs, the loss of a truely staggering amount of monetary value for the average airline worker.

Simply put, the public will not support a system that does not at least put signifigant effort into keeping them safe. Will they ever be 100%secure? Of course not.

But that should always be the goal.

 

[FCYTravis]

So that means the TSA should not respond to intelligence about what these people want to do to our aircraft?

The minute the terrorist plot to use liquid explosives was exposed, no terrorist will ever try using that exact specific modus operandi again. They KNOW it's been compromised. This is just like the whole shoe bomb thing - the TSA is trying to cover its ass by protecting against the LAST threat and not proactively looking at FUTURE threats.

No terrorist will ever try hijacking a plane again - because they KNOW that the passengers know what will happen and that the passengers WILL stop them from carrying out their plans - it happened even on 9/11, God bless those brave souls on Flight 93.

The only way to make flying perfectly safe would be for all passengers to be naked and strapped into their seats for the entire flight. I highly doubt any passengers would want to fly in that manner. The more hassle and time-wasting BS that the TSA puts pax through, and the less appealing airline travel gets, especially for short-hop flights like the DCA-LGA-BOS shuttle.

How many people do you bet canceled their transatlantic tickets after learning that coming back from the UK, they'd have to sit in their seats with nothing more than perhaps a single book to entertain them on an eight or 12-hour flight? I'd go literally stir-crazy without my laptop or my iPod.

 

[ilg30/7]

The minute the terrorist plot to use liquid explosives was exposed, no terrorist will ever try using that exact specific modus operandi again. They KNOW it's been compromised. This is just like the whole shoe bomb thing - the TSA is trying to cover its ass by protecting against the LAST threat and not proactively looking at FUTURE threats.

No terrorist will ever try hijacking a plane again - because they KNOW that the passengers know what will happen and that the passengers WILL stop them from carrying out their plans - it happened even on 9/11, God bless those brave souls on Flight 93.

The only way to make flying perfectly safe would be for all passengers to be naked and strapped into their seats for the entire flight. I highly doubt any passengers would want to fly in that manner. The more hassle and time-wasting BS that the TSA puts pax through, and the less appealing airline travel gets, especially for short-hop flights like the DCA-LGA-BOS shuttle.

How many people do you bet canceled their transatlantic tickets after learning that coming back from the UK, they'd have to sit in their seats with nothing more than perhaps a single book to entertain them on an eight or 12-hour flight? I'd go literally stir-crazy without my laptop or my iPod.

They will try the same thing again as soon as they figure out that it is a vulnerability. It becomes a vulnerability when we decide to discontinue security procedures designed to stop it.

The "you take you chances" stuff is pure bunk. Taking their chances is not what our passengers pay for. They might put up with the increased security hassle, and even not having an IPOD or laptop for a few hours (I wonder how people ever travelled 15 years ago), but they surely are not going to buy a ticket if they think that there is a decent chance the flight is going to get them killed. What you advocate is the surest way for both lives and jobs to be lost.

 

[FCYTravis]

Today is not 15 years ago. Passengers will not countenance not flying with their technology available to them, and that's without even mentioning the fact that checking any luggage with laptops/electronics in them is asking for it to be either destroyed through sloppy baggage handling, lost in the PHL black hole or stolen by poorly supervised TSA lackeys. There have been multiple news reports of theft rings operating among TSA employees so this is not just speculation.

I do not trust my laptop, which has essentially my entire livelihood on its hard drive, to the vagaries of checked baggage. If they ban laptops from carry-on luggage, I stop flying. Sure, you can hide a bomb in a laptop. You can hide a bomb in your ass, too - are we going to require that all passengers get a preflight enema with the compliments of CCY and the TSA?

The mere act of me walking outside my door places me at some sort of risk. Heck, I live in earthquake country - staying inside is dangerous too! I am thousands of times more likely to die of a heart attack from eating McDonalds or get killed by a drunk driver on the road than I am to be killed in a plane crash or act of terrorism. I choose not to spend my entire life in constant fear - because if I did, I would be letting the terrorists win. Their entire aim is to create fear. Ignore it. Show them you are unafraid.

Calculated risk is all around us - I choose not to bungee-jump or skydive, but I've had my butt in airplane seats more than 75,000 miles this year and stepping off the jetway into an jet-fuel-filled aluminum tube that hurtles through the sky 40,000 feet above the Earth at 600 mph has become mere routine. If my ticket is punched by a malfunctioning TCAS or a collapsing Jetway or Ahmed Abdul bin Jihad or an incompetent taxi driver on the way home from the airport, so be it. I don't live in fear every day, and neither should you.

 

[FCYTravis]

To steal some paragraphs from a pair of wonderful DailyKos posts...

People, don't you see? Don't you see how much safer we'll be if we simply stay at home, quit traveling, quit meeting in public, quit living together in large numbers, cut off all communications with the outside world? Living with a terminal case of the shivers, in the dark of our basements, and very, very afraid - that's the only way we can beat Al Qaeda. Get with the program, patriots. Push your soul in a deep dark hole and then follow it in.

Heart disease and cancer will claim about 1.5 million American lives each and every year. As far as accidental deaths (~100,000/year), motor vehicle accidents far and away lead the pack (+40,000/year), with accidental poisoning and falls in place and show. You can play with those stats all kinds of ways. But the bottom line is that over the course of a civilian lifetime, the odds of falling victim to Al Qaeda rank somewhere between falling off a ladder to your death and being struck by lightning inside your home.

Here's a message for both our homegrown Neoconservative, bloggy, gutless wonders and the Jihadi nutcases overseas: I grew up in the cold-war, my parents went through WW2 for crying out loud. We are not paralyzed with fear over Osama. Despite your best efforts, I'm not obsessed with terrorism. Sheesh, I barely even think about it. I face bigger statistical risks, in every way, every day, and on every scale, just driving across a set of railroad tracks and down the interstate smoking a cigarette in the rain, and I don't worry much about that either.

And if you want me to be afraid for my very nation's survival, Jebus H Christ, you damn well better be able to wave around a threat considerably more convincing than a rag-tag group of zealots who #### in caves and beg other people to put on suicide belts sporting a rip cord detonator.

 

[ilg30/7]

I don't think "expecting the TSA to respond to real threats" = "living in fear." I agree that we should live bravely. But that doesn't mean we have to be stupid about it. If we know that the terrorists are planning on using a certain method to do very bad things, then it makes sense to take measures to prevent that from happening. I think many of those who want to throw caution to the wind would be the first to come down on the government if it failed to act to protect us and something happened.

JMHO.

And the DailyKos? LOL.

 

[FCYTravis]

Here's what I want to come down on the government for:

While we're all running around wetting our pants over some Arabs mixing up home chemistry lab experiments, wanna take a guess as to what percentage of all those containers coming into the US on ships ever get opened and inspected?

25 percent?
10 percent?
5 percent?

Try one percent. One out of every 100 shipping containers ever gets opened and inspected by US Customs officers.

Do you know how ridiculously easy it would be for a terrorist to stick a dirty bomb in a 20-foot container, rig up a GPS detonating device and stick it on a boat from China along with all the other boxes of cheap Wal-Mart junk they ship to us? 😛h34r: Bye-bye San Pedro.

That's the sort of thing that would scare the #### out of me. Not to mention all the illegal immigrants they pack into those containers.

But no, that stuff isn't a priority. We've got to make sure Gramma doesn't carry her perfume onboard, and for God's sake that tube of Crest Ultimate Whitening is a threat to humanity. 🙄

 

[barbeetantrums]

I don't think "expecting the TSA to respond to real threats" = "living in fear." I agree that we should live bravely. But that doesn't mean we have to be stupid about it. If we know that the terrorists are planning on using a certain method to do very bad things, then it makes sense to take measures to prevent that from happening. I think many of those who want to throw caution to the wind would be the first to come down on the government if it failed to act to protect us and something happened.

JMHO.

And the DailyKos? LOL.

We should just expect that certain life activities contain a certain degree of inherent danger, i.e. flying on an aircraft. If one flies, they should accept the fact that there is a minute statistical probability (about the same chance of Myrtle the Turtle winning the Indianapolis 500) that a religious fanatic of the Islamic persuasion will attempt to blow up the plane. Now let me have my water as I do NOT want to be dehydrated when I get to London.

 

[RowUnderDCA]

ilg-

Thanks for the reasoned, rational argument.