"Disable aircraft-integrated passenger communications systems and services (phone, internet access services, live television programming, global positioning systems) prior to boarding and during all phases of flight."
Because you can't blow up the plane if you don't know where you are.
By the way - GPS watches work just fine in a plane.
It sounds like they are not allowed to be used according to that document though. I would imagine that cell phones also work just fine (I've never had the urge to try), but that doesn't mean their use is allowed.
Edit: Misread the document, I stand corrected. This is just another one of the TSA's typical security illusions.
Cell phones are a bit of a different story. Cell phones were designed to be operated somewhere around 0-100MPH from the surface (or very close to it). A plane violates those assumptions. That's important in a couple ways.
First, if you're in the air, you have line of sight to a lot more cell sites than you normally would. While there might be a couple sites at any give point that are a similar signal strength to you, here there could be hundreds. Basically, cellular wireless is based off the idea that your transmission only goes so far and therefore they can re-use the same spectrum in different locations (or, in the case of CDMA systems, not have every code talking over each other, but rather have a limited number of voices screaming). Being on a plane violates that. With a CDMA system, you'd either be drowned out by closer signals or you'd be causing a ton of interference for all towers within range and it'd be a lot of cell sites. With a TDMA system, you'd be transmitting on a frequency/time-slot that would be re-used on another tower that could similarly hear you. To explain that a bit more: in real life if you have:
in a linear fashion and you're transmitting to the first tower (using frequency A), your signal won't reach the last tower (which is using frequency A to talk to a different customer). However, if you're flying above all the towers, all of a sudden you have line of sight like you've never had before and if you're transmitting to the first tower on frequency A, your signal is also likely being heard by the last tower as well meaning that the entire theory of re-use goes down the drain.
Likewise, you're travelling at (potentially) 500 miles per hour. Travelling at 60MPH, you'll likely need a new cell site every few minutes (depending on geography and the like). At 500MPH, you could be getting new sites more often than not. Combined with the fact that you'd be in "range" of so many sites as noted above, it would become difficult for the network to determine which site you should be transmitting to/from.
And that is important. Cellular wireless only works because the same finite bandwidth can be reused since you aren't using that bandwidth in all locations.
So, unless microcells are used on the plane itself, wireless service is a terrible idea in the sky. A microcell in the plane would get the phone to transmit at a very low power (therefore not interfering with customers on the ground) and the cell site would be a constant distance from you. It's why even in countries where the aviation folk are moving toward cell phones on planes, they're doing so through microcells.
I'm not saying that it would't work. I haven't studied it, but it wouldn't be a wonderful experience and would cause havoc for the network.
EDIT: It seems that it's an FCC (in addition to FAA?) prohibition in the US (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phones_on_aircraft#USA_C...). The article on Wikipedia also mentions airlines installing microcells (although not by name) to allow people to call on planes.
I would imagine that text messaging probably wouldn't be subject to these issues since it's just a quick burst of data. It would also be a little easier to get away with using too.
Well, the issue is even having the phone on since your phone needs to been in communication to cell sites via the control channel (which determines how to send an incoming call to you, what tower you should be using, and allows for sending/receipt of text messages). So, you might not be causing problems for the traffic channel and the speed issue probably wouldn't be a problem, but you'd still be causing problems on the control channel even by having the phone on. Granted, if a few people did it, it might not matter, but if everyone did you'd have the exact same problem where you'd be defeating frequency re-use.
I think you're missing the point. The idea is to make it more difficult to stage an attack around a specific location, such as a heavily populated area or landmark.
I didn't notice anything requiring that window blinds must be closed though; it doesn't really seem to me that it would be too hard to just look out the window and figure it out.
Actually, I believe that it's an FAA regulation that the window shades stay open on emergency exit doors. I've never been on a flight where the flight attendants allowed those shades to be closed (even partially).
All planes that I've ever been on have had shades, likely for the same reason that you still occasionally see ashtrays (although slightly different since they're usually screwed shut) on planes. The price to disable/retrofit simply isn't worth it to the airlines. Again, I'm not 100% sure that it's an FAA regulation - do we have any pilots/flight attendants on HN who could weigh in?
Closing all the windows is dangerous because the pilots have no way of seeing the wings. If there was damage, gas leak, fire on the wing a passenger or flight attendant needs to see it and alert the pilots.
Personally, I find it impossible to even venture a guess as to what my location is just by looking out the window at cruising altitude. It becomes much easier during final descent, but it still requires familiarity with the location. In any case, an attacker will have nowhere near the precision provided by GPS.
Passengers, beyond curiosity, have very little use for GPS during a flight. When I'm on a plane I could really care less what my location is. I'm more concerned with how much longer I have to wait before arriving at my destination.
The parts of the security directive that bother me most are the restrictions on access to carry-on belongings and items on your lap and not being able to get up from the seat.
Is that speculation, or have you seen that provided as an official rationale? It just doesn't make sense to me that someone would not blow up a plane just because it wouldn't be maximally effective.
You're right that an attacker probably wouldn't back out just because the attack wouldn't be maximally effective, but the result would still be reduced casualties. Ideally, you want to prevent all attacks, but even when you can't the next best thing is to reduce the severity.
Media have reported that the attacker was instructed to blow up the plane over US soil. It's possible there were even more specific instructions that we are not privy to. Pieces of a plane raining down over a major city could not only inflict significant casualties, but also creates a hell of a lot of fear.
Fear, probably.
Damage/Casualties on the ground? Not so much.
Detroit jokes aside, Metro Airport is in Romulus. It'd take a staggering amount of either skill or luck to hit even one or two buildings with plane bits. And pedestrians essentially do not exist in Michigan.
Cripes, remember when Flight 587 went down over Queens? 5 people on the ground were killed and Queens is about 4 times as densely populated as Detroit is.
Also, I could write a computer program to use my cell phone's GPS receiver to activate an electronic device at a given location. (Hell, I do this to turn off my ringtone at work.)
Stuff that into the overhead compartment along with your bomb, and the plane is finished... at exactly the location you pre-program. (You don't even need to be on the plane. Put your bags in the overhead compartment, stuff some other bags in front of it, "oh shit, I forgot $foo in the terminal", done.)
The don't need to be on a plane bit- if you end up leaving the plane once you've boarded, the plane isn't going to pull away from the gate till you're either back on the plane or everything you took onboard with you is deplaned.
Now, that doesn't mean to say that you couldn't hide a bag onboard with such a device, and then make some kind of excuse that you have to go back to your office because there's some kind of emergency, and you won't be taking the flight after all. But then, you'll have had to somehow get your device into the sterile area (requiring accomplices who work there, or some surprisingly good luck getting through the x-ray scanners and explosive detection machines).
In other words, the security we had pre 9/11, with a little bit of modernizing, does the job fine. The rest of it (shoes, liquids etc) are really just theatre.
Have you ever tried to leave a plane after boarding?
This isn't fool proof but the FAA policy that my dad experienced years ago was that the passenger was dissuaded from leaving, the captain came out, and he was told that if he exits the plane they have to sweep it and because of that he'd be denied reentry. Passenger insisted. Argued a bit.
Long story short, the passengers all had to disembark with their luggage and go back through security screening. And the flight crew presumably did their standard pre-boarding sweep.
This was, oh, 2002 or so. I wouldn't be surprised if they even let you off the plane anymore, at least not until the 3-hours are up that the new regs mandate.
And similarly, there has long been double-checks to make sure that no checked luggage is on a flight that isn't matched to a passenger. My understanding is that luggage that is freight checked (like, they lose your luggage and throw it on a later flight to get it to you) has to be more thoroughly screened.
About a year ago they let me board the wrong plane.
I was flying LAN, and the first leg of the flight, in the US, was operated by American Airlines. When I got to Miami for my connection to Peru, I showed my ticked to an AA employee at the gate and asked which gate the flight would leave. She pointed me to a nearby gate, I went there, waited about an hour, and boarded when they called everyone. They manually checked my ticket and gave me the stub back.
When I reached my seat there was someone already there. He showed me his ticked stub and he had the same seat number as I did. As I was cursing the airline for overbooking, we noticed his ticket was printed by AA, mine was by LAN. Since I had just flown with AA with a LAN ticket, I thought it was OK. The flight attendant returned after a while telling me that LAN and AA both had flights to Peru at that same time and my flight was actually leaving from a completely different terminal.
I had to run all the way across the airport, get a new ticket printed, go through security again to get to the right flight. Since my bags had been checked to the final destination, if the AA flight wasn't full and they hadn't sold the seat I had I might have never noticed the mistake.
lan and aa share flights - you can book a lan flight and fly on an aa plane, or vice-versa, so this isn't that surprising (in fact, i think i have been in the same situation, but the other person was on the wrong flight. perhaps it was you? :o)
For future reference, if you were being bumped from the flight (due to overbooking), you would never have been allowed on the plane. They don't just assign two people the same seat and hope that you two will resolve it on board the aircraft.
It is strange that the agents were not following the correct boarding procedure, which is to scan the barcode on your boarding pass and to ensure that the computer's idea of your seat assigument agrees with what's printed on the pass. Usually, if they disagree, a new boarding pass is printed, and you board with that. (I like when they don't match, as the next words are usually, "oh, we had to upgrade you...")
Also, by not scanning the barcode, the gate agent ensured that you would not automatically be credited with frequent-flyer miles. Highly unusual.
Yes, this is the part of the rules I find most confusing. Someone with the ability and desire to blow up a plane wouldn't do it unless they could be sure they were on approach to the destination? There would be more devastation if the plane crashed into a densely populated area, but he would give up if he couldn't maximize the impact?
The only thing I can think is maybe it has more to do with the altitude of the aircraft and the hour window is whether the plane is on its final descent or not. Perhaps the explosion is not too powerful, and the pilot could recover in time if the plane is high enough? I'm not sure that's plausible.
Let's say you are a terrorist organizer and have found a novel way to get a bomb onto a plane. Assume also that if you abort the mission before detonation chances are good you'll get the bomb off the plane without detection. You probably also realize that any method you use will only work once, so you want to make sure that one use is used to best effect. Given this I can see the logic in aborting a mission which would give a sub-optimal result given that there is a reasonable chance you can try again for a better result later.
I imagine a plane crashing into a major city will bring far more terror than bringing a plane down in a desolate forest. Not only will be people be afraid to fly, they'll be afraid every time they see a plane overhead. Also imagine the the epic problems that will be caused if the powers that be declare in response that no commercial flights can fly over cities.
As others have pointed out, you can look at the window and see where the city is. Also, while your argument may be otherwise logically sound, that's a long string of suppositions that I'm not convinced hold. Do you honestly think that what you've described is the rationale for the policy?
That 1st hour and middle hour or two are perfectly safe.
Apparently only the last hour is unsafe on a plane.
Seriously, stop flying people. They have you because you give yourself to them. Just work online, etc. drive otherwise.
Once the airline industry needs bailouts and the TSA have people visibly twiddling their thumbs, suddenly rules are going to become much more reasonable.
The liquids aspect of this sounds like a pain to enforce. At least in the US, the initial security screening (before you get to the gates) is supposed to filter out all liquids (over 3oz.), but once you're through security, you can buy gallons of drinks, etc. from the stores in the terminal. Thoroughly inspecting those liquids at the gate without advanced equipment sounds really difficult.
What's interesting to note is that I've found box cutters in the stores within the gates of one airport before. I wonder what the regulations are for airport merchants?
Right, one large argument against the 'sterile area' joke is that it's very easy to acquire weapons - anything from workmen's tools to steak knives are easily accessible.
At least they are (so far) only enacting it for a few days. I really wonder what would happen if people consistently, politely resisted, by keeping things in their laps, by getting sick and having to run to the bathroom in the last hour of the flight, etc. Seriously, how are flight attendants supposed to enforce this stuff, and what are they to do about unruly passengers? An airplane is not exactly a high-security area.
The security on an airplane is the other passengers (and air marshals). I can guarantee that if you start resisting commands from the flight attendants you're going to attract attention from other passengers. Like it or not, the first thing that's going to pop into their heads is that you're planning on bringing their plane down.
Hypothetically, lets say that all passengers coordinate such an event - I'd imagine that's a really easy way to gain admittance to the no-fly list.
Seriously, if another passenger was arguing with the flight attendants about wanting to use the bathroom, the first thing that would pop into my head is that the guy probably really needed to go to the bathroom.
I wasn't necessarily thinking of the bathroom situation (although you certainly make a valid point).
My point I suppose was that flight attendants are in a lot of cases not going to be able to physically enforce their will on passengers. This is where other passengers step in, they are the ones who will come to the aid of the flight attendant to restore the peace. This doesn't mean that everyone will be throwing their own judgement out the window if someone has to use the restroom or complains about having to put their book away.
It should go without saying though that reactions will seriously depend on the situation.
I can foresee a lot of involuntary "resistance" of the bathroom restriction. An hour is a long time, and quite a few people have health considerations that make waiting that long simply impossible.
Why even comment on this story? It isn't even security theater anymore, it's amateur's night at the corner pub, with knee-jerk policies that a normal five-year-old kid can figure out how to get around.
And people still ask me why I prefer taking high speed trains! Flying by plane is so nerve-wracking nowadays, what with dogs sniffing about and burly custom agents and you have to arrive 2 hours beforehand, wait in long lines, sit in an enclosed room and wait even longer, share a bathroom with hundreds of other people.
In euro style fast trains, you arrive 2 minutes before, walk in, you can go have a meal, there is electricity for your laptop, there are toilets everywhere.
For any journey that can be done in 6 hours with the train, the plane journey, which would take between 1 hour and 2 hours actual flying, will take much longer.
That high speed train china built is the way to go. Planes should be used for flying really big distances, and then trains should be used to go on. The entirety of europe should be connected with trains, the U.S should have 10 major airport hubs and the rest done with trains.
The "terrorists" aren't the reason he prefers the train. Terrorist attacks on both are so rare that they're not a real reason to prefer one over the other. However the overly invasive, rude and ineffective airport security is a strong reason not to fly when there's an alternative available. For some reason the trains, malls, schools, libraries, churches and stadiums around where I live aren't getting blown up by terrorists and they have little or no security at all.
The point being, if a few train attacks occur, you can expect similar TSA regulations being issued for that mode of transport.
Not that its very likely in the USA; with a few exceptions rail service is abysmal. It took me 48 hours to travel from Nevada to Chicago last time I took the train, what with mechanical breakdowns and other unexplained delays. Lost my luggage too. Never again.
The uk experimented with metal detector type screening at train stations after our bombings on the 7th july. It doesn't work with you have thousands of people streaming in and out of the gates- all you do is end up practically shutting down the station.
So now they focus on temporary gates and profiling - which turns out to be much more efficient than random screening.
One thing to bear in mind- mass transit terror attacks over the past ten years have probably killed more people directly in attacks on trains (and subways/tube) than plane attacks.
Bombs in london and madrid caused hundreds of lives lost or serious injuries, bombs in the pakistan/india region often claim thousands.
The threat (as also mentioned here) is that a hijacked plane is, in reality, a massive missile and, to use the phrase, a true weapon of mass destruction. This however was resolved after 9/11 with new cockpit procedures and more alert passengers. (c.f. Bruce Schneier's blog for more)
At the moment (for various reasons to complex to go into here) I am sporting a huge beard. Other words that may be used to describe my beard are mighty, magnificent and fearsome. Anyway, showing up at the London side of the Eurostar last month, I was "randomly" selected to have my bag searched.
At the Paris side, I was again approached by staff, this time offering me a Halal meal...
It depends. I've taken train journeys in Spain where the security is almost as strict as the airport, although a lot faster. I am not a fan of security theater either but it's as much about quelling general passenger anxiety by making a demonstration of vigilance as anything else.
I'm not convinced of that, actually. We have historical precedent -- trains were bombed in Madrid, and there have been all sorts of transit bombings in the Middle East. But riding on the train is still not a big deal as far as I can see.
Passenger aircraft may be uniquely suited to inane security theatre. They're already so inefficient and uncomfortable that it's relatively easy to get away with piling on additional inefficiency and discomfort. And the problem of securing them feels almost tractable -- they're only vulnerable at the start and end of the trip [1], they have very limited entrances and exits, they carry so little stuff that you feel as if you actually have a chance of screening it all. [2] The problem with security theatre on trains and buses, to say nothing of ships, is that you just can't make it plausible without making it so expensive that you might as well just shut it down. Theatre is no good if the audience can't suspend disbelief.
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[1] Well, technically, there are surface-to-air missiles. But somehow those are easy to handwave away. Theatre is a mysterious business.
[2] You probably don't, of course, but reality is not at issue here.
It's really because trains cost a whole lot less than an aircraft....and that's about it. The theater of security has very little to do with protecting passengers if you notice. I'm always surprised nobody has just blown up the security line at an airport. Easy access to the line, hundreds of people, no security on the way to the line. It's about as soft of a target as you can find.
Both security theatre and terrorism is about managing perceptions. One is just a response to the other in the public + media domain.
Also government will do whatever it takes to seem like it is doing something. Lots of rules, directives with cryptic long numbers separated by dashes, TSA employees with uniforms resembling those of real police officers, etc, etc. This is all very very different than actually doing something or making anything safe.
I agree 110%. I think what I mean is that, the purpose of the security is 2-fold, to prevent the loss of expensive equipment, and to make people think that the security is for their benefit so that they continue to fly/ride/whatever and keep those businesses afloat. It just so happens that lots of the things you have to do to keep an airplane (the equipment) safe are the same things you need to do to keep people safe.
If they were serious about the security of the people on the aircraft, they'd make it really simple instead of complex. Simple things like no carry-ons whatsoever and every flight has a marshal. None of this Monty Python-esque "only 1 carry-on unless it's a 'personal item' in which case you get 2 or it's a Thursday but you can only get in it during the flight above 20,000ft and no later than 60 minutes before landing, but only if your point of origin is Minnesota during the month of November or Kansas during the Spring -- and if it's electronic in any way shape or form, forget about it, unless it has an 'airplane mode', or is a watch that can resist depths up to 60m".
edit the top story on reddit right now has this right
"Only two things have made flying safer since 9/11: the reinforcement of cockpit doors, and the fact that passengers know now to resist hijackers."
Yes, but for some reason that extremely rare event doesn't attract the same level of paranoid security theatre that other, even rarer events do.
There's something about planes. Perhaps it comes down to ground-dwelling-mammal hindbrain psychology: We're intrinsically more comfortable when we're close to the ground, even when we're theoretically more vulnerable there. I suppose if birds ran our transportation system they'd think differently. ("I'd sure hate it if someone set off some fireworks when I was on my feet on the ground -- I'd be trapped! Only two dimensions to maneuver in, low potential energy, I can't even move my wings properly, and just think how vulnerable I'd be from above! I'd far rather be 20,000 feet up, where I can jump out a window in case of trouble.")
Small problems cause more deaths in planes. A condom-sized bomb could make an airplane unstable enough to crash and kill everyone on board. On a train, a bomb that size would do little more than burn up a few rows of seats. They would just need to uncouple that one car, move everyone to the car behind, and continue running the slightly-shorter train.
The fear is the use of an airplane to crash against a building with people inside--i.e. to use the airplane as a weapon. The train can "only" be used for terror: to threaten to blow up some people. If you cynically add that government high officials are unlikely to use a train and very likely to be targets of an airplane used as a weapon, you get why traveling by train is still a pleasure.
In euro style fast trains, you arrive 2 minutes before, walk in, you can go have a meal, there is electricity for your laptop, there are toilets everywhere.
Or for those stuck on last Friday's Paris-London Eurostar, not so much toilets everywhere as everywhere a toilet. I payed a premium to use the channel link to get me home this Christmas and, after 3 days of travel hell and sheer incompetence before I finally got on, I can't see myself ever using them again. In fact, after reading what actually occurred under the channel on Friday - tunnel operators seemingly asleep, staff going AWOL, passengers urinating on the floor, not to mention Kent police interrogating those who finally made it out as if they were potential terrorists (save for Claudia Schiffer, who got a police escort home and a free croissant) - I'm not sure I actually trust them to even run a safe service, let alone a convenient one.
My faith in international rail travel from the UK has been destroyed completely in one fell swoop, and it has nothing to do with the engineering malfunction that instigated it all.
From my experience European flights are much easier than international flights, typically you only have to turn up an hour before the flight and security is pretty quick at both ends, especially at smaller airports and if you've only got carry-on.
From friends who've travelled business class out of City Airport in London, I've heard you can turn up as little as 20 minutes before the flight time.
Trains are more pleasant, but it's not the huge chore that say flying to JFK is.
I'd say this is definitely true at smaller airports (Munich for example), but horrendous at the mega-monstrosity airports like Charles De Gaulle or London-Heathrow. There's just nothing you can do to move through those places faster. (My last trip through London put a warning on my transfer boarding pass to allow 1-hour to get from gate to gate. I thought they were joking.)
It can vary a lot. I flew from London Heathrow Terminal 5 to Berlin earlier this year, and it only took 15 minutes from getting off the tube to being ready to board.
It doesn't have to be. Flying for me is fairly painless, but i've been doing it enough so i can optimize the process out. It doesn't take long (or much effort) to make flying equivalent to train travel, for instance (and it's much faster almost all the time).
This might be easy for you to do, but that's also only if you can shake the feeling of worry. I'm some punk kid, with tattoos and ear gauges, and when you combine that with my general distrust of authority, and mix in how terrible the consequences can be, it's not just the process that causes stress with flying. I don't carry a knife, but I do some craft-y stuff sometimes, and I constantly worry if I've accidentally left something in a pocket somewhere.
Yep. Which is why on European trips, when possible I travel by train. More efficient, more comfortable and on the right routes, you get to enjoy some good scenery too. I miss trains in the US, both for local transit and long distance travel.
I don't mind flying, and I fly crazy amounts, but it's become increasingly difficult to justify the headache, especially for some of the shorter fly-in, fly-out trips that I take
You don't need sarcasm to make fun of rail. Every time I try to get a hypothetical route on Amtrak.com for Dallas to New Orleans, or Florida, it insists on routing me through Chicago. Every. Single. Time.
In fairness, that's basically what the airlines do as well, they just have more hubs and the hub and spoke model itself is less visible because of the higher speeds involved. Presumably a more viable rail service would involve at least more hubs and hopefully also higher speeds.
That would likely be a bit claustrophobic should it ever be made. That's what I mean - big planes should be used between big hubs, for example leaving from the ocean beside England and landing in the ocean beside new york, then you take a bunch of trains to the various destinations.
Check-in, security checks and all that can then be distributed amongst all the small train stations. When you arrive at a plane hub, you just walk in with your hand luggage.
I used to think that smaller regional planes were the future, but nowadays I'm thinking perhaps the large titanicesque planes may be the way to go to solve this problem.
Hong Kong has this system, and I love it. The airport is far enough out, that it has it's own train, (the airport express).
Not the actual security screen, but all the rest of it can be done right at the train station. You can check your bags and even check in for your flight. The lines are short, and you can dump the bags early and enjoy the trip.
I used to joke that in the future they'd simply take all of your clothes and personal possessions at security, stamp your hand with an ID number, and make everybody wear hospital gowns.
Keep in mind this is only about flights originating in non-US airports with destinations in the US. None of this stuff applies to your flight back home to New York from Kansas next week.
No America-Centric implication was intended and I apologize if I came across that way. Just seemed important to bring up since the lead comment as of this writing is about using high-speed trains as an alternative. And unless there's something happening that I don't know about, there isn't a high-speed transatlantic train in the worls.
The terrorists have won.You don't have to bring down an aircraft to make flying a nightmare.
I know this sounds insane and the Terminally Stupid Administration will not allow it, but if someone came up with a "low security" airline, where screening was done by the airline itself using their own guidelines, I would be an enthusiastic customer.
We only need two things, an airline that values it's customers but is not willing to lose any planes and passengers who are alert and ready to take on any threats in the air. The latter attitude has been there since United Airlines Flight 93, the former is a mirage.
I agree. I don't see the need for such an invasive govt run organisation to get airlines to provide security - they already will have an interest in not losing their planes, they're expensive as hell.
It's true that these security directives don't seem to make much sense, but what is the alternative? I think what they are tring to accomplish is to simply reduce the risk of a repeat "accident" along the same line of the one that happened on Dec 25. After an incident like that, the TSA just cannot afford to have someone else pull a similar stunt, it would only further ruin their already low credibility.
The challenge is about striking a balance between having passengers bring whatever they want on a plane and having them fly naked and anesthetized, just like if they were cargo.
It sounds like these directives are based on specific intelligence of currently planned attacks and not meant to be broader long term regulations. What if there is good intelligence to suggest there are a dozen other attackers known to be trained and ready for this mission? If they are already in-transit and have a communication black-out from the leaders it seems entirely possible they would attempt it despite the failures.
The TSA has now officially become like an abusive, paranoid husband. Every event that has happened thus far has made him more suspicious and less rational, but the "lap burner" has at last pushed him over the edge into raging paranoia, doubling down with fevered lists of arbitrary, bizarre restrictions that make sense only to his unhinged mind.
And there's nothing we can do. We depend on him. We can't just walk out; where would we go?
I've noticed though, that ever sense the TSA got their new dark blue uniforms (from the old white ones), they seem to be quite a bit more respectful at least.
I was going to point that out also. This isn't a permanent change. It's still silly, but at least it's not permanent like the stuff with liquids and toenail clippers.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 226 ms ] threadBecause you can't blow up the plane if you don't know where you are.
By the way - GPS watches work just fine in a plane.
It sounds like they are not allowed to be used according to that document though. I would imagine that cell phones also work just fine (I've never had the urge to try), but that doesn't mean their use is allowed.
Edit: Misread the document, I stand corrected. This is just another one of the TSA's typical security illusions.
First, if you're in the air, you have line of sight to a lot more cell sites than you normally would. While there might be a couple sites at any give point that are a similar signal strength to you, here there could be hundreds. Basically, cellular wireless is based off the idea that your transmission only goes so far and therefore they can re-use the same spectrum in different locations (or, in the case of CDMA systems, not have every code talking over each other, but rather have a limited number of voices screaming). Being on a plane violates that. With a CDMA system, you'd either be drowned out by closer signals or you'd be causing a ton of interference for all towers within range and it'd be a lot of cell sites. With a TDMA system, you'd be transmitting on a frequency/time-slot that would be re-used on another tower that could similarly hear you. To explain that a bit more: in real life if you have:
in a linear fashion and you're transmitting to the first tower (using frequency A), your signal won't reach the last tower (which is using frequency A to talk to a different customer). However, if you're flying above all the towers, all of a sudden you have line of sight like you've never had before and if you're transmitting to the first tower on frequency A, your signal is also likely being heard by the last tower as well meaning that the entire theory of re-use goes down the drain.Likewise, you're travelling at (potentially) 500 miles per hour. Travelling at 60MPH, you'll likely need a new cell site every few minutes (depending on geography and the like). At 500MPH, you could be getting new sites more often than not. Combined with the fact that you'd be in "range" of so many sites as noted above, it would become difficult for the network to determine which site you should be transmitting to/from.
And that is important. Cellular wireless only works because the same finite bandwidth can be reused since you aren't using that bandwidth in all locations.
So, unless microcells are used on the plane itself, wireless service is a terrible idea in the sky. A microcell in the plane would get the phone to transmit at a very low power (therefore not interfering with customers on the ground) and the cell site would be a constant distance from you. It's why even in countries where the aviation folk are moving toward cell phones on planes, they're doing so through microcells.
I'm not saying that it would't work. I haven't studied it, but it wouldn't be a wonderful experience and would cause havoc for the network.
EDIT: It seems that it's an FCC (in addition to FAA?) prohibition in the US (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phones_on_aircraft#USA_C...). The article on Wikipedia also mentions airlines installing microcells (although not by name) to allow people to call on planes.
I would imagine that text messaging probably wouldn't be subject to these issues since it's just a quick burst of data. It would also be a little easier to get away with using too.
For example: http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123149266
It would be pretty easy to slip a gps antenna behind the shade before you closed it as well.
Passengers, beyond curiosity, have very little use for GPS during a flight. When I'm on a plane I could really care less what my location is. I'm more concerned with how much longer I have to wait before arriving at my destination.
The parts of the security directive that bother me most are the restrictions on access to carry-on belongings and items on your lap and not being able to get up from the seat.
You're right that an attacker probably wouldn't back out just because the attack wouldn't be maximally effective, but the result would still be reduced casualties. Ideally, you want to prevent all attacks, but even when you can't the next best thing is to reduce the severity.
Detroit jokes aside, Metro Airport is in Romulus. It'd take a staggering amount of either skill or luck to hit even one or two buildings with plane bits. And pedestrians essentially do not exist in Michigan.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&...
Cripes, remember when Flight 587 went down over Queens? 5 people on the ground were killed and Queens is about 4 times as densely populated as Detroit is.
Also, I could write a computer program to use my cell phone's GPS receiver to activate an electronic device at a given location. (Hell, I do this to turn off my ringtone at work.)
Stuff that into the overhead compartment along with your bomb, and the plane is finished... at exactly the location you pre-program. (You don't even need to be on the plane. Put your bags in the overhead compartment, stuff some other bags in front of it, "oh shit, I forgot $foo in the terminal", done.)
Now, that doesn't mean to say that you couldn't hide a bag onboard with such a device, and then make some kind of excuse that you have to go back to your office because there's some kind of emergency, and you won't be taking the flight after all. But then, you'll have had to somehow get your device into the sterile area (requiring accomplices who work there, or some surprisingly good luck getting through the x-ray scanners and explosive detection machines).
In other words, the security we had pre 9/11, with a little bit of modernizing, does the job fine. The rest of it (shoes, liquids etc) are really just theatre.
This isn't fool proof but the FAA policy that my dad experienced years ago was that the passenger was dissuaded from leaving, the captain came out, and he was told that if he exits the plane they have to sweep it and because of that he'd be denied reentry. Passenger insisted. Argued a bit.
Long story short, the passengers all had to disembark with their luggage and go back through security screening. And the flight crew presumably did their standard pre-boarding sweep.
This was, oh, 2002 or so. I wouldn't be surprised if they even let you off the plane anymore, at least not until the 3-hours are up that the new regs mandate.
And similarly, there has long been double-checks to make sure that no checked luggage is on a flight that isn't matched to a passenger. My understanding is that luggage that is freight checked (like, they lose your luggage and throw it on a later flight to get it to you) has to be more thoroughly screened.
I was flying LAN, and the first leg of the flight, in the US, was operated by American Airlines. When I got to Miami for my connection to Peru, I showed my ticked to an AA employee at the gate and asked which gate the flight would leave. She pointed me to a nearby gate, I went there, waited about an hour, and boarded when they called everyone. They manually checked my ticket and gave me the stub back.
When I reached my seat there was someone already there. He showed me his ticked stub and he had the same seat number as I did. As I was cursing the airline for overbooking, we noticed his ticket was printed by AA, mine was by LAN. Since I had just flown with AA with a LAN ticket, I thought it was OK. The flight attendant returned after a while telling me that LAN and AA both had flights to Peru at that same time and my flight was actually leaving from a completely different terminal.
I had to run all the way across the airport, get a new ticket printed, go through security again to get to the right flight. Since my bags had been checked to the final destination, if the AA flight wasn't full and they hadn't sold the seat I had I might have never noticed the mistake.
It is strange that the agents were not following the correct boarding procedure, which is to scan the barcode on your boarding pass and to ensure that the computer's idea of your seat assigument agrees with what's printed on the pass. Usually, if they disagree, a new boarding pass is printed, and you board with that. (I like when they don't match, as the next words are usually, "oh, we had to upgrade you...")
Also, by not scanning the barcode, the gate agent ensured that you would not automatically be credited with frequent-flyer miles. Highly unusual.
The only thing I can think is maybe it has more to do with the altitude of the aircraft and the hour window is whether the plane is on its final descent or not. Perhaps the explosion is not too powerful, and the pilot could recover in time if the plane is high enough? I'm not sure that's plausible.
And you know the length of the flight, within a reasonable tolerance. So timing can't be too hard.
This rule makes no sense at all.
You don't care about the death toll, you just care about the fear.
This blog appears to have just repeated what was posted there.
Apparently only the last hour is unsafe on a plane.
Seriously, stop flying people. They have you because you give yourself to them. Just work online, etc. drive otherwise.
Once the airline industry needs bailouts and the TSA have people visibly twiddling their thumbs, suddenly rules are going to become much more reasonable.
Hypothetically, lets say that all passengers coordinate such an event - I'd imagine that's a really easy way to gain admittance to the no-fly list.
And that's probably your best case scenario.
My point I suppose was that flight attendants are in a lot of cases not going to be able to physically enforce their will on passengers. This is where other passengers step in, they are the ones who will come to the aid of the flight attendant to restore the peace. This doesn't mean that everyone will be throwing their own judgement out the window if someone has to use the restroom or complains about having to put their book away.
It should go without saying though that reactions will seriously depend on the situation.
In euro style fast trains, you arrive 2 minutes before, walk in, you can go have a meal, there is electricity for your laptop, there are toilets everywhere.
For any journey that can be done in 6 hours with the train, the plane journey, which would take between 1 hour and 2 hours actual flying, will take much longer.
That high speed train china built is the way to go. Planes should be used for flying really big distances, and then trains should be used to go on. The entirety of europe should be connected with trains, the U.S should have 10 major airport hubs and the rest done with trains.
Nowadays, flying is just such a bother!
Not that its very likely in the USA; with a few exceptions rail service is abysmal. It took me 48 hours to travel from Nevada to Chicago last time I took the train, what with mechanical breakdowns and other unexplained delays. Lost my luggage too. Never again.
So now they focus on temporary gates and profiling - which turns out to be much more efficient than random screening.
Bombs in london and madrid caused hundreds of lives lost or serious injuries, bombs in the pakistan/india region often claim thousands.
The threat (as also mentioned here) is that a hijacked plane is, in reality, a massive missile and, to use the phrase, a true weapon of mass destruction. This however was resolved after 9/11 with new cockpit procedures and more alert passengers. (c.f. Bruce Schneier's blog for more)
At the Paris side, I was again approached by staff, this time offering me a Halal meal...
Passenger aircraft may be uniquely suited to inane security theatre. They're already so inefficient and uncomfortable that it's relatively easy to get away with piling on additional inefficiency and discomfort. And the problem of securing them feels almost tractable -- they're only vulnerable at the start and end of the trip [1], they have very limited entrances and exits, they carry so little stuff that you feel as if you actually have a chance of screening it all. [2] The problem with security theatre on trains and buses, to say nothing of ships, is that you just can't make it plausible without making it so expensive that you might as well just shut it down. Theatre is no good if the audience can't suspend disbelief.
---
[1] Well, technically, there are surface-to-air missiles. But somehow those are easy to handwave away. Theatre is a mysterious business.
[2] You probably don't, of course, but reality is not at issue here.
Also government will do whatever it takes to seem like it is doing something. Lots of rules, directives with cryptic long numbers separated by dashes, TSA employees with uniforms resembling those of real police officers, etc, etc. This is all very very different than actually doing something or making anything safe.
If they were serious about the security of the people on the aircraft, they'd make it really simple instead of complex. Simple things like no carry-ons whatsoever and every flight has a marshal. None of this Monty Python-esque "only 1 carry-on unless it's a 'personal item' in which case you get 2 or it's a Thursday but you can only get in it during the flight above 20,000ft and no later than 60 minutes before landing, but only if your point of origin is Minnesota during the month of November or Kansas during the Spring -- and if it's electronic in any way shape or form, forget about it, unless it has an 'airplane mode', or is a watch that can resist depths up to 60m".
edit the top story on reddit right now has this right "Only two things have made flying safer since 9/11: the reinforcement of cockpit doors, and the fact that passengers know now to resist hijackers."
There's something about planes. Perhaps it comes down to ground-dwelling-mammal hindbrain psychology: We're intrinsically more comfortable when we're close to the ground, even when we're theoretically more vulnerable there. I suppose if birds ran our transportation system they'd think differently. ("I'd sure hate it if someone set off some fireworks when I was on my feet on the ground -- I'd be trapped! Only two dimensions to maneuver in, low potential energy, I can't even move my wings properly, and just think how vulnerable I'd be from above! I'd far rather be 20,000 feet up, where I can jump out a window in case of trouble.")
Or for those stuck on last Friday's Paris-London Eurostar, not so much toilets everywhere as everywhere a toilet. I payed a premium to use the channel link to get me home this Christmas and, after 3 days of travel hell and sheer incompetence before I finally got on, I can't see myself ever using them again. In fact, after reading what actually occurred under the channel on Friday - tunnel operators seemingly asleep, staff going AWOL, passengers urinating on the floor, not to mention Kent police interrogating those who finally made it out as if they were potential terrorists (save for Claudia Schiffer, who got a police escort home and a free croissant) - I'm not sure I actually trust them to even run a safe service, let alone a convenient one.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/22/eurostar_eurotunnel_...
My faith in international rail travel from the UK has been destroyed completely in one fell swoop, and it has nothing to do with the engineering malfunction that instigated it all.
From friends who've travelled business class out of City Airport in London, I've heard you can turn up as little as 20 minutes before the flight time.
Trains are more pleasant, but it's not the huge chore that say flying to JFK is.
I don't mind flying, and I fly crazy amounts, but it's become increasingly difficult to justify the headache, especially for some of the shorter fly-in, fly-out trips that I take
I know! I just love that hourly New York-to-London train service that runs under the Atlantic...
(I once was trying to book a flight from Kansas City to Portland, and -- I kid you not -- one suggested route was through Atlanta)
Check-in, security checks and all that can then be distributed amongst all the small train stations. When you arrive at a plane hub, you just walk in with your hand luggage.
I used to think that smaller regional planes were the future, but nowadays I'm thinking perhaps the large titanicesque planes may be the way to go to solve this problem.
Not the actual security screen, but all the rest of it can be done right at the train station. You can check your bags and even check in for your flight. The lines are short, and you can dump the bags early and enjoy the trip.
LHR to JFK would only take about 9 hours. By train.
On the other hand, it doesn't exist, and would be crazy expensive.
"It wouldn't be profitable."
Much better to kill each other over religion instead...
Then we'd all be told to fly naked, or in airport provided suits.
http://gizmodo.com/5435117/the-unofficial-guide-to-flying-af... (scroll down to the 'be ready for anything' part)
I know this sounds insane and the Terminally Stupid Administration will not allow it, but if someone came up with a "low security" airline, where screening was done by the airline itself using their own guidelines, I would be an enthusiastic customer.
We only need two things, an airline that values it's customers but is not willing to lose any planes and passengers who are alert and ready to take on any threats in the air. The latter attitude has been there since United Airlines Flight 93, the former is a mirage.
The challenge is about striking a balance between having passengers bring whatever they want on a plane and having them fly naked and anesthetized, just like if they were cargo.
And there's nothing we can do. We depend on him. We can't just walk out; where would we go?
"Gale Rossides Acting Administrator"
In other words the TSA still doesn't have a permanent head even though the new administration has now been in office for a year.