Letters to the Editor
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Duty Time Limits
I agree that the rest requirements need an overhaul almost as much as the TSA does. At one of the regional airlines I used to work for, I've heard that the latest hot-button topic for crews is scheduling stand-up overnights with just under a four-hour break overnight. Per their contract, if the break is less than four hours, the company isn't required to get hotel rooms for the crew, leaving them to try catching a nap on the plane or in a breakroom. Perhaps someday the FAA will mandate a minimum 10-hour rest period for all flight crews, giving a chance for a decent night's sleep after getting to the hotel. One can dream, anyhow.
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What do you expect from the TSA screeners?
This is a crap job for people who can only get crap jobs. They have no real future and they spend all day watching people with more money go off to do more interesting things.
So, they make your day unpleasant. They nit-pick about whether a container that holds 3.3 fl.oz. can actually hold less than 3.3 fl.oz. and whether a baggie is of the appropriate size. They despise you for doing the things they can't. They hate you for having the things they can't afford. They have total control of you for five minutes and any sympathy or empathy they had was burned out of them on their first day.
They are the stereotypical low level bureaucrats that have no power except to hassle the people they are supposed to serve.
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Wired Pilots?
A couple of points beg further discussion concerning the JetBlue cockpit time "experiment:"
- each airline, has in effect, its "own" FAA, some overly friendly, cooperative and complicit with the carrier, some laissez faire and some downright antagonistic and punitive. The nature of the relationship is determined by the personalities of the FAA's Principal Inspector for that carrier and the carrier's executive(s) as well as whatever unspoken political deals are in force at the moment. It's obvious JetBlue's FAA is of the first catagory.
- FAA Headquarters continues to exhibit only perfunctory oversight and control of its regional and dedicated carrier offices
- JetBlue's pilots are obviously not unionized.
One further question: Where the pilots involved in this study "volunteers?"
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The Baggie
Great article. Keep complaining. But I partly read it to get the answer posed in the sub-head. What is the logic behind the quart-sized baggie, as say opposed to gallon-sized freezer bag. Oh, I forgot. Asking for a logical explanation may be out of the question here. But was there any rational examination of the situation that led to this decision.
I know. I know. I should know better. Any screener who rejects a rolled up, nearly empty tube of toothpaste because it says its 4oz when it's full, is clearly not capable of understanding the distinctions involved in a quart vs. a gallon sized baggie.
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Hoax
What's truly ridiculous is the simple fact that mixing up a "binary explosive" in the confines of an airplane would be smelly, time-consuming, painfully obvious and easily stopped:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/17/flying_toilet_terror_labs/
Not only that, even if the terrorist-chemist successed, the resulting product would be unlikely to produce an explosion large enough to down an airliner.
In other words, liquids brought onto planes don't constitute any sort of threat whatsoever. So why are we asked to jump through yet another set of unreasonable restrictions and demands? Part of me hopes it's simple bureaucratic cover-your-ass cluelessness. My paranoid half wonders if it's just another link in a ploy to keep us all scared and trained to blindly follow ludicrous demands.
The TSA is the bastard offspring of the FBI, the KGB, and the DMV. It's a horrible, wasteful, impersonal, humiliating bureaucracy that wastes gobs of money while providing little if any real threat protection. One can only hope that someday we wake up and elect someone who can reform this toxic sacred cow.
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Focus on TSA is fine with me.
I see no need for a moratorium on security and the TSA. In fact, the crapulent performance of the TSA is, in my opinion, the biggest threat to commercial aviation today. Most of us don't fly JetBlue, or ever consider the aesthetics of terminals and paint jobs, but we all take our shoes off and throw our precious Starbucks away.
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One Further Point...
I should have mentioned this in my original letter on this topic...
The installation of biometric measuring equipment may have driven the aircraft into the "EXPERIMENTAL" category, where, among many other restrictions, the carriage of revenue passengers is forbidden. Such a violation could be grounds for JetBlue's operating certificate to be rescinded.
But since we've already established they have a "friendly" FAA, there's little fear... although the local FAA officials who bought into this project may be candidates for "re-education."
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JetBlue Experiment
I have been reading about this "experiment" widely and frankly, I'd have felt more safe on one of these test flights rather than less. Yes, Grasso, the pilots were volunteers. But more important is the fact that each of the test flights carried a relief pilot that wouldn't normally have been on board. And that's why I would have felt more safe. Also, JetBlue had approval from their local FAA, so why fault the airline if their plan didn't go higher up the chain? Fault the local FAA officials who approved the plan in the first place, which apparently was within their authority to approve.
And next time I fly, I'm laying in a full set of solid toiletries. I have to use four trays everytime I fly (one for emptying out my pockets, one for my boots, one for my laptop and one for my bag) and I'm not giving those screeners the satisfaction of bitching about my stuff. Incidentally, every person in my line with the utter gall to forgo baggage check was stopped and searched. Every damn one of us. I watched while half the organic hygiene section of Whole Foods went into the trash.
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Beware of ninjas
I've said it before -- just wait until The Bad Guys deploy some martial-arts-trained attackers, and kill a bunch of people. Then we'll get to spend the duration of the flight with our hands and legs strapped together with disposable nylon handcuffs. Won't that be great?
Patrick- love your column. Salon editors- bring us more people like him! Your non-US readership isn't terribly interested in all politics all the time.