Letters to the Editor
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Leave All Blades Behind Act ... L A B Bi A ?
If we make an acronym out of this..
Is it really? One is so soft while the other is so sharp...Damn what a ying yang...
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Sad but true
Patrick Smith makes as succinct and clear a summary of the current state of affairs in the USA as I have recently seen when he says "In America, reasoned debate and clear thinking aren't the useful currencies they once were".
This extends far beyond the immediate context of air travel, as I feel certain he intended.
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horrible mistake? or "impossible to answer"
The subhead says the shooting was a horrible mistake, but the third paragraph says the question of its justification is "impossible to answer". I stopped reading there. Make up your mind.
Anyway, "bomb" + plane + sky marshalls = shot dead. That's it.
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Jean Charles de Menezes, redux
Go to the BBC's website (news.bbc.co.uk) and read up on the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes, and the subsequent fallout that happened when the truth of the events surrounding his killing was leaked, which truth turned out to be nearly 100% the *opposite* of how it was originally described by the police who killed him. To wit: he did not jump a turnstile, was not running through the station, he was not carrying a heavy backpack, he was not wearing a heavy overcoat, and he was in fact being *restrained* with his hands pinned to his side by one of their own officers when he was shot six times in the head.
Sound familiar?
Apparently if you have dark curly hair and tan skin you are fair game, circumstances notwithstanding.
For what it's worth, I am blonde-haired and blue-eyed, but if I had a mind to do it, I could probably kill someone with the steel knitting needles I'm allowed to bring onboard.
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Neckties are not intimidating
"Let's face it," TSA regional manager Ann Davis tells Ask the Pilot. "You can strangle somebody with a necktie if you really want to. It's time to focus on screening out intent, not just items themselves."
The important question you have to ask about the item is: would you be unwilling to facedown someone because they were wielding it? For example, I would know a moment of stark terror if someone was swinging an exacto knife at me in close quarters. The same can't be said for a necktie. A 7-inch phillips-head? I wouldn't be as frightened of it as a knife, but it would give me pause, and I think that's something to consider.
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An unusual break in your logic
Dear Patrick,
I'm a devoted reader of, fairly regular writer to your column and all-around member of your fan club. Partially that's due to the fact that the same things that fascinate you about aviation also fascinate me, but partially it's due to the fact that I share both your worldview about the crazy times we live in and your strict adherence to logic.
That said, I think today's column takes a slight detour from your normally rigorous logic. It's clearly too soon to make a final judgment on the actions of the Air Marshalls in Miami, or on what those actions say about the system as a whole, which you also acknowledge. But while you heavily criticize them in the lead, at first blush, they did exactly what you spend most of this column (as well as most of many other columns) advocating for: enforcing security based on actions and intent, not dumb things like scissors and sneakers.
Whether the use of *deadly* force was warranted is an unanswered and very important question. Among other things, I don't know what their protocol is for these things – whether it's a "if you shoot at all, shoot to kill" situation, as many police protocols are. But on balance, a guy running around an airplane screaming incoherently and reaching for something in a bag is *exactly* the type of threat that at least I believe we should be responding to – as opposed to weeding out manicure kits at security. It's a dangerous behavior, and at least apparently, an intent to do harm. I share your belief that a lot of our response since 9/11 has been overblown, wasteful and not very effective. But this one, at least on the face of it, seems to me like a counter-example.
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Let's be clear...
While I wouldn't presume to speak for Mr. Smith's intent, I don't see the contradiction that nobodaddy does between "horrible mistake" and "impossible to answer". I see the latter as pertaining to the establishing of fault, and the former as pertaining to an objective view of the incident. That it was a horrible mistake (because we now know that the victim was innocent) is true; but that does not mean that the marshals were at fault. It was a mistake caused by tragic misunderstanding; but, if the facts are truly as they have been presented, the marshals' choice was justified and appropriate. Only an investigation may show whether this was rampant paranoia, or prudent caution; but it will always remain a horrible, tragic, regrettable mistake.
Further, I think that Kirk's observation that a box-cutter is more intimidating than a plastic shiv or a broken-off wine-bottle (the latter of which, you would have to admit, has been presented as a perfectly intimidating weapon in barroom brawls in movies and television for decades) misses a central point in the article. Perhaps in a one-on-one encounter between the putatitve terrorist and an unarmed passenger, the knife has the edge over a screwdriver, which has the edge over the plastic shiv -- but the imagined confrontation between the terrorist, however-armed, will never again be a Hollywood-style mano-a-mano fight. As the article points out -- the fight will now be box-cutter versus the air marshal's (or pilot's) gun.
More to the point, again pointed out in the article -- never again can there be a hijacking in which the passengers may assume that if they do nothing to provoke the hijacker, they may safely land and be freed after a hostage crisis. Can there possibly be a hijacking from here on out in which the passengers do not all assume that they are bound for a fiery death intended to kill thousands more people? In which case -- your putative terrorist wielding any hand-weapon will not find himself facing a single unarmed opponent who must consider his weapon's "intimidation factor". The terrorist is more likely to find himself mobbed from all sides, or indeed, felled by thrown missiles until he can be overwhelmed and disarmed. (Do not imagine that a laptop computer would not make a deadly weapon itself, in the right hands. Thrown from behind, it would change the putative one-on-one confrontation dramatically.)
Even on the day of 9/11, when none of the passengers or crews of the 4 jets had the images of their fates seared into their minds, 1 plane out of the four was successfully taken back from the terrorists, even though they were armed the same way as those on the other 3 planes. The deciding factor was apparently forewarning and knowledge of the fates of the other 3. That forewarning and knowledge is still a factor.
I am pleased to see someone like Mr. Smith addressing the issue of carry-on bean-counting, and the way in which current policies miss the forest while focusing on the individual leaves. The very weapons that the terrorists used on 9/11 proves one thing -- that they put thought into what they could and could not get onto an airplane. They knew what they couldn't, and therefore, they figured out a way around existing restrictions. We gravely mislead ourselves into a false sense of security, if we think that future terrorists will not do exactly the same thing. Acknowledging that terrorists are evil is one thing; let's not commit the sin of underestimating them. Expending so much time and effort to prohibit that which has been used before creates only an illusion of security, making it look as if we are accomplishing something, while ignoring a vast number of credible threats.
The saddest part is that it shows the terrorists as more flexible and creative in their thinking, than we are. That won't do. We should demand that it not do. We should demand actual thought and effort put into our security, instead of a useless stage-show. Some of us aren't fooled. We don't feel safer just because our Swiss Army knives have been duly confiscated, while we remain aware that we go into the plane and sit on top of a load of unscreened luggage that might contain anything.