Show of Security

by Bruce Schimmel of the Philadelphia Citypaper

November 29-December 6, 2001

 

Does the prospect of waiting in long lines at the airport make you feel

more secure? Does the sight of weekend warriors in camo with

semiautomatics make you feel safer?

Apparently these new signs of security provide many Americans a certain

measure of comfort in these uncertain times, which drove Congress to

create still another branch of law enforcement.

 

These new measures are costly; they are inconvenient, invasive and in the

opinion of many in the air transportation business, almost pointless. But

you won’t hear these voices of reason and experience in the mass media,

for the simple reason that the FAA regulates the airline industry and

Congress has effectively bought off large airlines by putting them on the

dole. Billions to bail out sagging airline stock prices can purchase a lot

of silence, especially now that airlines won’t be paying for these shows

of security. The costs will quietly be added to your fare, much as you now

pay for other forms of airline entertainment.

You won’t hear any bitching about long lines from those who run the

airlines, but you will catch candid comments from those who actually fly

the planes , the pilots themselves, whose own lives are really on the

line.

 

As a pilot, I hear such grumblings in pilots’ lounges and read the

wisecracks in lounges online, such as avweb.com. In places like these,

surrounded by their peers, pilots appraise these security shows with eyes

wide and rolling. The decision to add thousands more soldiers, as the

president recently did, met with much pointed criticism and downright

cynicism, even from such a God-and-apple-pie bunch that pilots tend to

be.

 

To be sure, there are measures which should be, perhaps should have been,

taken to make air travel safer. There should be defensive, disabling

weapons and procedures. Sky marshals absolutely make sense, now that the

economics of air travel demand that hundreds be lodged in as small a space

as possible.

 

Still, if you continue to think that standing in line to receive a

desultory poke at your suitcase actually makes you more secure, consider

what went right on Sept. 11.

 

Even with the accepted and flawed wisdom to "let the hijackers have what

they want," civilian passengers in a plane over Pennsylvania still did the

smart thing by jumping the hijackers. Terrorism foiled.

 

Inspections and airport guards regardless, now that people know what to

do, it seems unlikely that terrorists would try to take another plane.