[Infowarrior] - Pilot's good op-ed on air 'security'

[Richard Forno]

Thursday, Jan 21, 2010 20:21 EST
  Ask The Pilot
Emergency doors, karaoke bombers and other false alarms
When did we become such a nation of scaredy-cats?
By Patrick Smith
http://www.salon.com/news/air_travel/index.html?story=/tech/col/smith/2010/01/21/american_hysteria
This country needs to get a grip. We need a slap in the face, a splash  
of cold water.

On Saturday, 57-year-old Jules Paul Bouloute opened an emergency exit  
inside the American Airlines terminal at Kennedy airport. Alarms  
blared and sirens flashed. Bouloute later told police that he'd opened  
the door by accident.

Which is what you'd assume. Sure, the exit was clearly marked, but it  
happens all the time, does it not? In office buildings, shopping  
malls, hospitals and airports, well-intended people become distracted  
and pass through restricted doorways. And you would think our airport  
security force would keep this in mind and react accordingly, and not  
with the assumption that every errant traveler is a terrorist poised  
for mass murder. To the contrary, why in the world would an attacker  
go around setting off alarms and drawing attention to himself?

Unfortunately, this is America 2010, and the response at JFK was  
neither rational nor surprising. All of Terminal 8 was evacuated for  
more than two hours. Police then swept through the building with dogs   
and SWAT teams (because, you see, a terrorist wouldn't quietly drop an  
explosive device into a trash barrel; he would first set off alarms,  
in order to...?). Before being allowed back in, thousands of travelers  
were forced to undergo rescreening at the Transportation Security  
Administration checkpoints, giving guards a chance to snag any butter  
knives or 4-ounce shampoo bottles they might have missed the first  
time. Inbound planes were stranded on the tarmac and departures were  
delayed for several hours.

Mind you, this was the third incident at New York airports in recent  
weeks in which transgressions resulted in chaos and evacuations.

Bouloute, who had just come from Haiti, of all places, was arraigned  
on charges of first-degree criminal tampering and third-degree  
criminal trespass. He faces up to seven years in prison. I can't  
imagine he'll actually be convicted, but the mere fact that we're  
going through the motions is disheartening and embarrassing enough.

But what shocks me the most is that throughout all the coverage of the  
incident, including numerous interviews with ticked-off passengers and  
somber-voiced officials, not once has anybody raised the point that  
maybe — just maybe — we overreacted. Everyone, instead, is eager to  
blame Bouloute.

"As a result of the defendant's actions, thousands of people were  
required to evacuate and to be rescreened by TSA, causing substantial  
delays in the airlines' schedules," District Attorney Richard Browne  
said in a statement.

No, I'm sorry, Mr. District Attorney, but that's not it. What caused  
the delays and what hassled so many travelers was not the defendant's  
actions, but our mindless and hysterical response to them.

The media and officials, in all possible gravity, keep describing the  
incident as a "security breach." Not to harp on semantics, but am I  
the only person who finds this silly? Granted I'm not privy to every  
detail, but let me go out on a limb here: It was an accident. A simple  
and minor accident. As Bouloute's attorney told reporters, "He just  
walked through the wrong door."

How could he have missed all the red signs and placards? Who knows,  
though bear in mind that Bouloute had come from Haiti, where three  
days earlier an earthquake had killed or injured hundreds of thousands  
of people, some of them, we have to presume, Bouloute's friends or  
family.

Let's click our heels together and enjoy a bit of time travel. True  
story: In 1996 a distracted individual opened a different restricted  
door at Kennedy airport, setting off an alarm and feeling like fool  
for doing so. That individual was me, Patrick Smith. Those were my  
regional pilot days, and I was trying to find my way out to the bus  
stop from the rat maze that is Kennedy's Terminal 3. It was dark and I  
was exhausted and, well, pack me off to Gitmo, I pushed on the wrong  
door. This particular "security breach" didn't make the evening news,  
however. A guard came over, checked me out, and reset the bell.

What has become of us? Are we really in such a confused and panicked  
state that a person haplessly walking through the wrong door can  
disrupt air travel nationwide, resulting in mass evacuations and long  
delays? "The terrorists have won" is one of those waggish catch-alls  
that normally annoy me, but all too often it seems that way. Our  
reactionary, self-defeating behavior has put much at stake — our time,  
our tax dollars and our liberties.

And where is American Airlines in all of this? It has refused to  
comment, citing the "ongoing investigation." Par for the course. When  
was the last time you heard a carrier complain publicly about the  
misguided policies of airport security?

And that's a shame. I realize that airlines are in a very tough  
position. They face extreme liability issues and cannot be seen as  
lobbying against security, even if what they're complaining about is  
justified. And the airlines, remember, caught an awful lot of flak,  
most of it undeserved, in the aftermath of Sept. 11. But at some point  
they need to stand up. Needless security woes make their customers  
angry and are one of the prime reasons that many people choose not to  
fly. At times the industry's silence and squeamishness suggest a  
business model of masochistic capitulation.

In Europe carriers have been feistier. After the foiled liquid bomb  
plot in London in 2006, British Airways threatened to sue the British  
Airports Authority over a draconian carry-on ban that resulted in  
scores of cancellations and massive delays. A group of airlines led by  
budget carrier Ryanair prepared a half-billion-dollar lawsuit against  
the British government, hoping the threat of legal action would  
inspire ministers to rescind some of the luggage restrictions,  
described by Ryanair as "illogical and unworkable."

Eventually the rules were relaxed.

Never mind screening delays, how about the cost of unscheduled  
diversions? Ever since 9/11, skittish fliers have touched off a plague  
of in-flight false alarms. A passenger looks at somebody the wrong  
way, and the next thing you know fighter jets are scrambled and you're  
headed to Newfoundland. Aircraft are evacuated while canine units  
inspect hundreds of suitcases. For an airline the trickle-down price  
of such disruptions — fuel costs, crew costs, passenger misconnects  
and downstream delays — can run well into the hundreds of thousands of  
dollars.

Maybe the most appalling diversion story is the one from 2004  
involving a United Airlines 747 bound from Sydney, Australia, to Los  
Angeles. The plane jettisoned thousands of gallons of fuel over the  
Pacific and returned to Australia because a discarded airsickness bag  
was discovered with the letters "BOB" scrawled across it.

So, you ask, what is so nefarious about the letters "BOB," from the  
perspective of a crew member who might find such a message? Don't ask  
me, I'm just an airline pilot. "Baleful Old Bagels"? "Bob O'Brien"?  
"Bauxite on Board"? I have no idea. United, though, for reasons that  
defy any precedent or explanation, took the letters to mean bomb on  
board, and — I am not making this up — went all the way back to Sydney.

As we know, terrorists are apt to advertise the imminent detonation of  
an explosive device ahead of time by means of a cryptic acronym  
scrawled on a barf bag.

And so on. How about the time in 2002 when military fighters were  
scrambled because — get ready now — a group of karaoke singers were  
seen chatting excitedly and pointing at the Manhattan skyline from the  
window of an Air India 747. This was just one of almost 3,000 military  
intercepts of civilian jetliners over North America since 2001. I  
mean ... I just ... It's...

Calming down will not make us "less safe," as security zealots are  
wont to argue. Quite the opposite, it would free up time and  
resources, allowing us to focus on more credible and potent problems.

Meanwhile, somewhat related to all of this, late last week a U.S.  
missile strike in Pakistan killed a man named Jamal Saeed Abdul Rahim.  
A former member of the Abu Nidal terror group, Rahim had been one of  
the FBI's most wanted fugitives, sought for his role in the hijacking  
of Pan Am Flight 73 in September 1986.

Flight 73 had stopped in Karachi when a team of hijackers stormed the  
Boeing 747. Pakistani security forces rushed aboard in a rescue  
attempt, and the terrorists began shooting and lobbing grenades.  
Twenty-two people were killed and more than a hundred injured. Rahim  
and three accomplices were convicted by Pakistani authorities, but  
they were eventually released.

The Abu Nidal group, today long forgotten, was busy in the mid-1980s.  
A year before Karachi they killed 20 people in a pair of coordinated  
ticket-counter assaults at the airports in Vienna and Rome.

Also in 1986 was the bombing of TWA Flight 840. As the 727 was on  
approach into Athens, a bomb went off in the cabin, killing four people.

In fact, over the five-year span between 1985 and 1989 we can count at  
least six high-profile terrorist attacks against commercial planes or  
airports. In addition to those above were the horrific bombings of Pan  
Am 103 and UTA 772, the bombing of an Air India 747 over the North  
Atlantic that killed 329 people, and the saga of TWA Flight 847.

Flight 847, headed from Athens to Rome, was hijacked by Shiite  
militiamen armed with grenades and pistols. The 727 then embarked on a  
remarkable 17-day odyssey to Lebanon, Algeria, back to Lebanon, and  
then back to Algeria. At one point passengers were removed, split into  
groups and held captive in downtown Beirut. The photograph of TWA  
Capt. John Testrake, his head out the cockpit window, collared by a  
gun-wielding terrorist, was broadcast worldwide and became an  
unforgettable icon of the siege.

I say "unforgettable," but that's just the thing. How many Americans  
remember Flight 847? How many remember the Karachi murders? It's  
astonishing how short our memories are. And partly because they're so  
short, we are easily frightened and manipulated.

Here in this proclaimed new "age of terrorism," we act as if the clock  
began ticking on Sept. 11, 2001. In truth we've been dealing with this  
stuff for decades. Not only in the 1980s, but throughout the '60s and  
'70s as well. Acts of piracy and sabotage are far fewer today.

Imagine the Karachi attack happening tomorrow. Imagine TWA 847  
happening tomorrow. Imagine six successful terror attacks against  
commercial aviation in a five-year span. The airline industry would be  
paralyzed, the populace frozen in abject fear. It would be a  
catastrophe of epic proportion — of wall-to-wall coverage and, dare I  
suggest, the summary surrender of important civil liberties.

What is it about us, as a nation, that has made us so unable to  
remember, and unable to cope?

Next time in "Ask the Pilot": Flying in Haiti