TSA “theatre†flying in turbulent skies
American airline passengers are coping with increased security and added airline hassles by flying less. In fact:
• Scheduled US passenger traffic on airlines dropped 5.5 percent last year, and 3.1 percent worldwide, according to the International Civil Aviation Organization.
• That decline was the largest on record.
It’s not just passengers who are impacted by the growing security issue. It also has serious implications for the US airline industry, an already shaky business that could lose even more travelers. Just a one percent drop in demand would cost US airlines US$1 billion, analysts say.
Increasingly, commentators are criticizing the TSA.
Wrote Orlando Sentinel columnist Beth Kassab:
“We’re taking off our shoes, we’re putting our tiny toiletries in clear bags and soon more of us will likely be going through full-body scanners. And yet, we don’t feel any safer.”
Security breaches have been well-publicized.
Shlomo Dror, an Israeli air security expert, said after 9-11: "The United States does not have a security system; it has a system for bothering people."
“Flying before 9/11 was already awful, and it has only become worse,” declared LA Times columnist Jonah Goldberg.
He cited airline woes that even go beyond security such as “the petty humiliations, the routine deceptions from airline employees desperate to rid themselves of troublesome travelers (Oh, they can definitely help you at the gate!), the stress-position seats, the ever-changing rules for what can and cannot be in your carry-on, and being charged for food that the Red Cross would condemn if it were served at Gitmo.”
Columnist Kassab calls airline security “tenuous.” She labels the TSA protection “window dressing.”
Some passengers are increasingly saying security efforts are little more than “TSA Theater.”
The TSA says their inconsistency of what to expect at different airports is deliberate. After the Detroit incident, the agency immediately called for tightened security at several airports by patting down passengers, rules that were quickly modified.
On their Web site, TSA.gov, they claim:
"Passengers should not expect to see the same thing at every airport. TSA has a layered approach to security that allows us to surge resources as needed on a daily basis."
But increasingly, skeptics are saying the security agency’s answer to safer skies — to increase the $2.50 fee all passengers pay on each ticket — is clearly inadequate. Commentators say major reforms that include new leadership are critical concerns.
Says Johnny Jet, a world traveler at his site:
“If I were the head of the TSA I would hire the folks who are in charge of Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport and the security detail for El Al, Israel’s national airline. These folks have it down.”
By David Wilkening
David
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