Fly The Friendly Skies

First, time for some disclosure — I don't fly all that often. It's been several years since I've been on board an airplane, and I have no idea when I'll have the need to fly again. A number of my friends, family members, and coworkers, though, use air travel on at least a semi-regular basis. So perhaps this rant is more on their behalf than on my own. Frankly, I'm glad I don't fly very often. Especially after someone tried to blow up a plane on Christmas day with a bomb, apparently planted in his underwear.

Now, the notion of dying in a horrific, fiery, oh-the-humanity crash is hardly appealing to almost anyone, and there's certainly a greater possibility of that occurring on an airplane than in, say, a rickshaw. The odds of it happening are pretty tiny, though. Statistically, you are a lot more likely to die in a car crash. And as for air-travel-related death due to terrorism, well, that happens even less. In fact, if you don't live somewhere that has an armed insurgency going on at the moment, terrorism probably shouldn't be much of a worry. Given that there are easily 50,000 commercial airline flights worldwide every single day, and virtually none of those crash, and of that miniscule number, hardly any are due to terrorism, it's just shouldn't be much of a concern.

So if terrorism doesn't worry me, why am I glad that I don't fly very often? Ironically, it's due to the single largest result of terrorism — security.

For most of us, airport security has been a fact of life for as long as we can remember. It actually started in the late 1960s, as a response to some hijackings and threats from the PLO, and since then has become ever more pervasive and stringent. Since 2001, things have only accelerated and with every reported — usually thwarted — incident, it seems to escalate a little more.

Look at the sort of security procedures you and your baggage might have to endure if you were to board a plane tomorrow (assuming you aren't on a no-fly list, but that's another topic for another rant). There's of course the metal detectors, the X-ray machines, the millimeter wave scanners, the bag searches, the pat downs, the quasi-interrogations, and the 'additional screening.' That has been the norm for years. Now, as new incidents provoke new security, your shoes are subject to special investigation, your water bottle had better be tiny, and your fingernail clippers are considered a deadly weapon. With this latest incident, carry on baggage is being further restricted, and blankets can't be on your lap at landing. That's over and above all the usual things being scrutinized even more than usual.

So if you're keeping track, at this point, blankets, fingernail clippers, and 330 ml bottles of Evian are all are likely terrorist weapons. The fact that this latest incident involved explosive planted in underwear is a new and disturbing trend. There's only so many places left to go from here. How long until some enterprising bomber decides to transport explosives in his colon? Then in addition to having our shoes scanned, our bags bombarded, our belongings rifled, and our privacy violated, we'll all have to show up extra early for our pre-flight counter terrorism enemas.

And here's the thing. Despite all the technology, the security personnel, the preposterous restrictions, the elaborate procedures, things will still go wrong. Mr My-Pants-Are-Exploding was on a watch list, had been barred from travelling to the UK, and his own father had contacted the American embassy with concerns that he might be up to no good. Yet he was still able to board a plane to the US with a bomb in his shorts. No matter how thorough security might be, failures will happen. And if it becomes, as indeed it already seems to be, nothing more than a bunch of needless hoops to jump through, it will be a lot of money and time and effort wasted to the only avail of making the travelling public feel a little safer.

Of course, to feel safer, you have to know about all the threats, and what's being done to stop them. Or in this case, what wasn't being done properly.

So while I'd rather not die in a terrorist attack, I know that unless I happen to find myself within a few hundred miles of Khandahar, that's just not especially likely to happen. I'd really rather not have to endure a random and unprovoked body cavity search next time I go for a training upgrade or on a family vacation. The way things are going, though, I think I'd prefer to stay home.