Lets tighten up our airline "security" because foreign goverments aren't.

[strredwolf]

Doesn't make sense, does it?

There's already reports that flight crews are requiring no in-lap anything for the last hour of the flight (the original rule was 10 minutes) and that there's additional screening on domestic flights.

That's pushing it.  The story as it stands now is that the suspect was on a Lagos-Nigeria-Amsterdamn-Denver trip.  He went through Nigerian security and passed it, with a valid passport and US visa.  He was rescreened again at the boarding gate of the Nigeria-Amsterdamn flight.  There was no rescreening in Amsterdamn; he boarded Northwest 253 and tried to blow himself up 30 minutes outside of Denver.

And now they want to up internal security inside the US?!?  When the threat was OUTSIDE?!?

Now, granted, we've been ramping security up over time; Southwest here in BWI has sniffer booths that detect chemical explosives, something that could have detected this guy.  A sudden push isn't going to help TSA's own public image.

So, mind if I suggest a few things?

1. Continue the existing path of the slow security ramp-up, but be more transparent about it.  Let news agencies report on the sniffer equipment, and get the equipment out en-mass to all airports.  Continue to develop technologies that balance detection with time.
   
2. That said, restrict international travel to border states.  Airplanes from overseas cannot travel across state boundaries. East coast for Europe/Africa/Middle East, southern states for Mexico and South America, West Coast for Asia and Austrailia.  The only exception is Canada, due to how we're sharing northern and east coast boarders.
3. If you're traveling internationally, you get screened again in every country. No exceptions.  When the EU gets fully merged, then yes, all the "international" flights say from France to Germany are really going to be classified as "domestic" and they can loosen up a bit there. But if you're going continent to continent, you better get rescreened.
   
4. Review screening procedures to an inch of their life.  President Obama has already ordered this for US flights.
5. Retrain all flight personnel, pilots and flight attendants, in FCC and FAA regulation.  They should not be telling me to turn fully off my iPhone when they've already tested Airplane mode.  If the airlines have a problem, then the FCC and FAA need to permit testing of the most common gadgets to see if they do cause a problem.  So far, they haven't!
   
   (A sidenote: an episode of Mythbusters had Grant with equal equipment in a faraday cage, and sweeping through all known cell phone frequencies.  One of the GSM frequencies caused problems.  It could not be confirmed, however; when they went out in an actual plane, parked outside a hangar at one airport, there were no problems.)

Anyone else have any suggestions?

Comments

[skunktaur.livejournal.com]

Just to be a little nit-pickey, it's 'Amsterdam' without the additional 'n'. Unless you're being sarcastic and I missed it :)

For the rest, I have no idea what happened. So I am going to refrain on any other comment to either defend or condemn procedures or personnell in Amsterdam Airport.