By TPerl
Has anyone been to an airport since the new rules went into effect? I just flew from Newark to Houston for work, and my (severely biased) grades for the airports are: Newark: D, Houston: A-
I decided rather than risk losing my saline solution and other assorted salves, balms, and ointments (actually, I think balms are permitted), I would pack everything in a single bag and check it. That was a big mistake. Got to Newark about 5:15 a.m. on Thursday for a 6:55 a.m. flight. First problem: If you're checking a bag at Continental there's only ONE line for everyone (except First Class). And there's a lot of fucking people at the airport at 5:15 a.m.! At about 5:55 I finally got my boarding pass and a baggage sticker on my bag. 40 minutes gone - at least I had my iPod.
Now problem #2: You'd think they would just take your bag and drop it behind them on that conveyor belt, right? No - they make you stand on ANOTHER line with your "checked" bag so that you can just leave it in front a big scanner-type machine which will (eventually) scan the contents at some point after you walk away. No identity check, no bar code swipe -- just put your bag down and go. What the fuck did I need to wait on a line for! Ten minutes wasted to carry a bag 10 feet.
6:10 a.m.: Now I have to go through security, which thankfully didn't seem to have a long line. But here's problem #3: It starts out as one line (fine, now I'm used to it), but then it inexplicably SPLITS into two lines toward the end (So what, you ask?). Well it turns out that one way takes you a short 15 feet or so to the last security person you'll have to show your ID and boarding pass to before you pick a metal detector line and start taking off your shoes. That seemed to be about a 2 minute wait. Then there's the other way, which of course is where I ended up -- and for reasons beyond comprehension, this line goes PAST that last security person until you hit a wall about 20 feet later, then turns around and takes you back toward the metal detectors again. It was about five times as long as the other way and took about 20 minutes!!! I'm convinced these assholes at Newark did it just to fuck with us.
I got to the gate about 6:30, just in time to board.
Oh yeah, Houston Airport? I checked in online before I left. Got to the airport at 11:30 a.m. Dropped my bag off at the "bag drop" (for those who checked in online) and they actually TOOK THE BAG FROM ME. Five minutes. Breezed through security in less than five minutes. Now I had almost two hours before my flight departed. What a huge difference in efficiency. So why the A minus? The minus is because they make everyone enter at Terminal C, yet my flight was leaving out of Terminal E (good thing I had all that time since it was quite a walk). At least I had time to watch the start of the Yanks-Bosox series before boarding -- just long enough to see A-Rod ["The Best (paid) Player in Baseball"] fuck up another opportunity with men on base.
I think I'm done with flying -- it just gets worse and worse. Or I'm moving to Houston. Either way, I guess the terrorists really won after all.
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4 comments:
Nice work, Perl. I made a few edits to separate your paragraphs and clean up our strict Rolling Bones/AP style.
But as far as the state of our homeland security and the tally of Us v. Terrorists, the editorial board of the New York Times provides a good (read: fucking horrifying) rundown:
The sad truth is that while some important steps have been taken to harden our defenses against terrorist attacks, gaping holes remain in our security net.
For starters, consider aviation, where billions have been spent to improve airline and airport security, with only middling results. The likelihood that terrorists will be able to hijack passenger jets as they did on 9/11 has been greatly reduced by hardening cockpit doors, arming pilots on some routes and placing many more air marshals on flights. The screening of all passengers, their carry-on bags and their checked luggage has also made it much harder to smuggle standard bombs or metallic weapons aboard.
But there is still no system to detect liquid explosives, a shocking deficiency more than a decade after terrorists were caught preparing to use such explosives to bring down a dozen airliners over the Pacific Ocean. The installation of “puffer” machines to detect trace explosives is lagging, and a program to integrate explosive-detection machines into the automated baggage conveyor systems at airports will not be finished, at the current pace of spending, for another 18 years.
Very little of the commercial air cargo that is carried aboard planes is screened or inspected, mostly because neither the shippers nor the airlines want to disrupt this lucrative flow of business. There is still no unified watch list to alert airlines to potentially dangerous passengers, and a prescreening program that would match airline passengers against terrorist watch lists remains stuck in development. All this in the industry that has received the most lavish attention since 9/11.
Even worse gaps remain in other areas. Port security relies primarily on certifying that cargo shipments are safe before they are loaded on freighters headed for this country. Only a small percentage of containers are screened once they hit our shores, raising the fearsome possibility that a nuclear or biological weapon might be smuggled in and detonated here.
Programs to keep dangerous nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union out of the hands of terrorists through greater security are moving so slowly that it will take another 14 years to complete the job. This is reckless beyond belief when nuclear terrorism is the most frightening prospect of all.
On the industrial front, the nation’s chemical plants, perhaps the most lethal and vulnerable of all our manufacturing complexes, remain dangerously underdefended, mostly because the government has been unwilling to compel private industry to take action. A new tamper-proof identification card for workers in the far-flung transportation industry has yet to be issued.
The leaders of the 9/11 commission issued a final report last December analyzing how well the administration and Congress had done in carrying out the commission’s 41 recommendations. They awarded only one A minus (for disrupting terrorist financing), a batch of B’s and C’s, and a dozen D’s in such critical areas as reforming intelligence oversight, assessing infrastructure vulnerabilities and sharing information among government agencies. A failure to share intelligence allowed the 9/11 terrorists to succeed despite advance hints of their presence and intentions.
The commission awarded five failing grades, the most serious of them for Washington’s failure to allocate homeland security funds based on risk. Even after moderate tinkering with the formulas this year, greedy legislators from states that face little danger continue to siphon off funds that would be better used to protect New York, Washington and other large cities likely to hold the greatest attraction for terrorists.
Almost everyone agrees that the administration has taken some important steps toward greater security, but as the leaders of the 9/11 commission recently commented, it has not made the issue a top priority. The long, costly, chaotic occupation of Iraq, though touted as a front line of the war on terror, has actually sapped energy, resources and top-level attention that would be better applied to the real threat, a terrorist attack on the homeland.
It's sad, but none of that really surprises me. All this supposed extra security and it's still just a crapshoot.
I guess we're just supposed to "feel safer" if we have to wait ten times longer to get to the gate?
I did see on the news last night that they're going to revamp the air marshall program to make it harder for their cover to be blown. For example, they'll no longer be required to stay in the same predetermined hotel. In fact, one of these hotels actually had a sign in the lobby stating "Welcome air marshalls"!!!
Can we create a new Homeland Security position where your only job is just to go around smacking certain people in the head and say "Idiot."?
It's sad, but none of that really surprises me. All this supposed extra security and it's still just a crapshoot.
I guess we're just supposed to "feel safer" if we have to wait ten times longer to get to the gate?
I did see on the news last night that they're going to revamp the air marshall program to make it harder for their cover to be blown. For example, they'll no longer be required to stay in the same predetermined hotel. In fact, one of these hotels actually had a sign in the lobby stating "Welcome air marshalls"!!!
Can we create a new Homeland Security position where your only job is just to go around smacking certain people in the head and say "Idiot."?
Perl,
Well blogged.
- Chief
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