Letters to the Editor
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From the Author, re: TSA Alert, Reverse Thrust, Comair Crash
To answer a few of your posts:
1.In his anti-Muslim rant, the never incorrigible Golden Boy writes: “Patrick runs like mad from this topic - feel free to join him for as long as you can.”
Actually I’ve written more columns on airport security and terrorism than any other topics. By “run like mad” he means only that I refuse to agree with his point of view. As for the recent TSA alert, reader GeeBee is correct that I’m loath to do yet another story that essentially repeats the same things I’ve said numerous times before. He writes: “...they detained that lady because of suspicions about what she was carrying, but we never heard what happened to the person, for example, who had wires sticking in a block of cheese.”
My thoughts exactly. Let me get this straight: people have been caught smuggling alleged bomb components through airport security? Oh really? Who are these people, and where are they now? They must have names. Were they not arrested? Were they shuttled off to a secret prison? Did the guards simply confiscate their rigged cheese and let them pass? How can it be that potential terrorists disappear into the media ether like that? The story makes no sense. The tail *is* wagging the dog, if you ask me.
2. Jared2 writes, “I find it unbelievable that airplanes are allowed to fly with inoperative thrust reversers. How can this be allowed?”
Reverse thrust provides a relatively small portion of a plane’s stopping power. But for good measure, when a reverser is inoperative, penalties apply to ensure enough runway remains. In the TAM accident, the reverser malfunction is still unconfirmed.
3. Somebody expressed surprise that I didn’t reference last year’s Comair incident in Lexington, Kentucky. I wrote a Salon cover story on the crash shortly after it happened: http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/08/28/plane_crash/
- Patrick Smith