Boxers or Briefs?

In 2001, a British citizen named Richard Reid  was on an American Airlines flight from Paris and was spotted by an alert flight attendant when he tried a light a fuse protruding from the heel of his shoe. Richard was also known as the "Shoe Bomber" and thankfully his only legacy was the TSA requirement for passengers to remove their shoes before proceeding through an airport checkpoint. There were the usual jokes speculating what the security rules would be if Mr. Reid's chemicals were hidden somewhere else.

I think that with the events last week surrounding the attempt to down a Delta 767 on approach to Detroit, the jokes are suddenly not funny anymore. Apparently the 23 year-old young man had some materials hidden down his skivvies that could be activated by a shot of catalyst from a syringe he was allowed to carry on his person for "medical reasons". The attempt failed and U.S. dodged another malicious bullet aimed at innocent travelers by yet another religious fanatic.

What is amazing is that this guy was on an intelligence list but was docile enough not to graduate to the "No-Fly" list. Expect those graduation requirements to be relaxed. Also, the perp allegedly purchased a one-way ticket with cash and had no checked luggage...on an international flight no less. This was a huge red flag even back in the '60s when Braniff 707's were being forced to Havana! Those seem like quaint times now. Some balls were dropped!

So what does this mean to the travelling public? New security procedures include: no more blankets or pillows, all passengers must remain seated during the last hour of flight with nothing in their lap, boarding gate searches, no more in-flight internet, phones or GPS location maps, a ban on the crew pointing out interesting landmarks while in flight over U.S. airspace and probably many more things that are not for the public view. All of these are nice, public gestures, but will they make a difference?

Years ago, I enjoyed air travel. Now it is like checking into Alcatraz Prison. I dread it even though I am part of the industry, I get no breaks because of that, I have to follow the rules just like anyone else. The rules will get stricter too as good-guy technology chases bad-guy technology. Take a look at the image below from one the new backscatter X-ray machines now being used at some airports. This example is much less graphic than can be found on the net, she must be wearing lead panties.

Anyway, this is where things are going. This is sad to me because I am a "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." kind of guy.  Thanks Ben Franklin, I could not have said it better myself!!

Launch Comment

With all the civil aviation and airline stories in the news lately, I decided to start this blog. In the last few months, we have had the Buffalo, NY crash, Sully's Hudson River landing, the new U.S. government rules for airlines, the NWA flight that overflew its destination and most recently the attempted bombing of a Delta/NWA flight and the runway overrun of an American Airlines flight in Kingston, Jamaica. I will comment on most of these in later posts.

In many cases of aviation or passenger incidents, a lot of the information from the major news outlets and other sources are one-sided or misinformed and I intend to comment on these events from my point of view. I may not know all the facts, but I can add my perspective as an industry insider.

I can provide a unique outlook because I have worked in airline flight operation centers for over eleven years. That gives me an "insider's" angle to the day-to-day tactics as well as what actions are taken when things go wrong. All airlines have operation centers that are responsible for keeping things on track. Most of these offices have representatives from maintenance, crew scheduling, flight dispatchers, customer service and system controllers. We all work as a team because when things go wrong, the responsibilities overlap and expertise from each discipline is usually required to get the system back to normal.

Most airline travelers are unaware that these centers even exist, but they are where the decisions are made that effect their journey. In all cases, safety is first, customers are second, and economics is a third priority. I am not an automatic apologist for the decisions airlines make in certain situations, but I hope I can explain why some actions were taken. Making an airline work smoothly is a monumental task with all the unpredictable outside factors that can impact operations. It is a delicate coordination between many diverse groups that must be repeated day after day!

Most airline flight operations offices resemble NASA mission control to varying degrees. People huddled over  computer monitors and usually large system monitors on the walls. An example is shown in the photo below.