Subscribe to RSS 2.0
Ahhh, air travel
posted by Rob on 30 Dec 2007
Anyone who's flown somewhere in the last year or two, and has taken off their shoes to do it, will probably enjoy this New York Times blog post by a commercial airline pilot. My favourite part: unpicking the logic of confiscating liquids from travellers. Why is it done? Because they could contain explosives. So what do they do with the potential explosives they confiscate? Dump 'em in a big old bin right next to the queue of people because we all know there are no explosives in there.
Personally, I don't understand why it's worth spending billions to stop me dying on a plane, but safety upgrades on trains are allowed to wait for decades because they cost money. Is it really worse to die because of terrorism than because of a preventable accident? Aren't ya just as dead? But then these things never seem to be about actually saving lives.
I was once told I couldn't get on a flight from Edinburgh to London because my passport was out-of-date. I'm talking about an internal flight here. I could have travelled the same route on a train and no one would have cared whether I could prove who I was, but planes are different. Despite the Madrid bombings, it's still all about preventing an exact re-run of 9/11.
Comments: 3
Right, because "they" are sure to stick with exactly the same plan rather than mix it up to avoid detection.
Posted by: Auntly H | December 30, 2007 05:19 PM
Rob,
That article is complete plop (Em can i say that on your blog?). In fact it is such rubbish i've not bothered to read it in its entirety. When the trial begins early next year for those planning to blow up planes over the Atlantic you will be able to see the evidence as it unfolds in court and i hope you and others will be shocked. The threat was real and remains real.
The difference between air travel and train travel is that with air travel the police and other agencies have a legitimate non-intrusive opportunity to search peoples bags and prevent a disaster without infringing civil liberties too much, as far as rail travel is concerned the safety of travellers depends on keen eyes of members of the public, law enforcement officers and good intelligence. Quite frankly i would be happy to have my bags searched everytime i get on a train but it is just not feasible and would only give Shami Chakrabarti another opportunity to winge. Having travelled abroad a fair amount in the last year or so, the delays at airports have not been much different to before and as a side benefit it stops silly people taking too much hand luggage onto planes, which in turn makes for a more comfortable flight as people are not constantly searching through their bags above your head during the flight. I could go on but i need more red wine and the shop shuts soon.....
As Em will complain if i don't link this in some way to literature, TS Elliot's The Waste Land resonates with me when i think of terrorism and planes.
What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains,
stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal
Posted by: David | December 30, 2007 07:48 PM
I thoroughly agree with this blog post. 100%. I most especially wish that there was a little more protest going on from travellers, particularly here, but I think that anyone who protested would be lumped in with terrorists as someone who wants our country to be less safe. Like people who smoke pot, or people who worship Allah, or people who dislike Bush, or people who are even slightly different from the GOP's holy vision of an America that could and should never exist.
South Park did a show about one character inventing a highly, um, intrusive method of transportation. The ringing endorsement for it was, "Well, at least it's better than going to the airport."
Posted by: KatharineC | January 2, 2008 04:40 PM