ONTPax
5th Oct 2001, 21:53
There are three seperate columns here, in the sequence they were published, oldest listed first. Interesting reading.
http://latimes.com/news/local/la-000077581sep28.column
September 28, 2001
Steve Lopez:
Points West
Airlines Far From Their Best at Providing Sense of Security
Whatever the airlines have been doing since Sept. 11 to make flying safer, it isn't nearly enough.
On Wednesday, while checking in for a Northwest Airlines flight from Minneapolis to Los Angeles, I got singled out to go stand in another line for a thorough inspection of the bag I was checking.
That's the good news. I was flying alone, had a one-way ticket, and had purchased it that day, which understandably set off a few alarms. But while waiting in the second line, the woman in front of me had a story that'll make you want to go Greyhound. Within 10 days of the terrorist attacks, Donna Breslin had carried a can of pepper spray through security checkpoints at
airports in Oklahoma City, Houston and New Orleans.
No one spotted it.
"I didn't even remember that I had it with me until I reached into my briefcase for something and saw it there," said Breslin, who lives in Oklahoma City and oversees clinical drug trials for pharmaceutical companies.
She carries pepper spray for protection, but usually leaves it home when she flies.
You guys have got a problem, she told a Continental Airlines ticket agent and
an airport security officer on her next trip through Oklahoma City. Breslin said the security guy told her a pepper canister looks just like lipstick on the scanner, so it doesn't necessarily get flagged.
"I have to fly for a living, and it scares me to death that they overlook this," says Breslin.
When Breslin was cleared to go in Minneapolis, I set my bag on the counter
and a nice gent went through every last inch of it. As he did, another agent called to him.
"Hey Jack, is ammo OK?"
The second agent held up a box of shells for Jack to see, and I'm assuming, or at least hoping, that the passenger in question was a mere hunter. Well, Jack didn't know if ammo was OK, which is a little scary by itself, so he radioed for someone to render a verdict.
Do I get an opinion on this? I asked an agent. Because as a general rule, I would say no to live ammo. It doesn't matter that it's going to be locked up in the belly of the plane. I just don't want it in the air with me.
I'm not sure how the matter was resolved, but here's another white-knuckle detail. Although my check-in bag was thoroughly inspected, my two carry-ons weren't even opened. I put them on the belt at the next checkpoint, and the two guys at the X-ray monitor didn't even appear to be looking at the screen.
This is what they call high alert?
If this is as good as it gets in a time of crisis, they ought to ban all carry-ons, because neither the system nor the people in place are adequate to the task.
"We will not surrender our freedom to travel," President Bush said Thursday
in a federal take-to-the-skies promotion in Chicago. He was standing in front of planes from American and United. Get it? America united?
Bush said he's going to get more federal marshals on planes, seal the cockpit doors, and put the federal government in charge of airport security.
This is reassuring to fliers only up to the point where two Air Force generals have clearance to order commercial airliners shot out of the sky if there appears to be a threat to a U.S. city.
Who knows how close we might have come Thursday, when two F-16 fighter planes
escorted an Air Canada plane back to Los Angeles after some lunatic allegedly
smoked in the bathroom and then threatened American passengers.
As for Bush's plan to make the skies friendly again, here's a question: While
we're waiting for it to happen, can't the airlines do anything besides grovel for public handouts?
These are the free-market champions of deregulation who crushed upstart competition. The people who stick it to customers at every opportunity. The same ones who made cut-rate, inept security the industry standard even when they were sitting on sky-high piles of cash, most of which was pocketed by the CEOs.
And then they were in line for a $15-billion bailout even as they planned to stiff their own employees. Northwest and American both announced without shame that they were invoking an emergency clause and refusing to pay severance to a combined 30,000 employees they were dumping, a decision they're reconsidering under pressure.
And on top of all this, they've got an attitude.
Well before Sept. 11, my wife and I had scheduled a trip for early October on
American. I happen to have flown so many miles on American, I've got platinum status.
So my wife calls and says due to the obvious concerns about safety, and the uncertainty of work schedules resulting from the possible start of World War III, we might like to reschedule.
One agent tells her one thing, another agent gets snippy and tells her another, and the bottom line is if we make a change in our plans, they'll nick us for $100 per ticket.
How's that jingle go?
Doing what we do best?
*
Steve Lopez can be reached at [email protected].
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://latimes.com/news/local/la-000078980oct03.column
October 3, 2001
Steve Lopez:
Points West
Unscreened Ground Crews Add to Flying Jitters
She flew eight straight days ending Sunday, and each time the United Airlines flight attendant got onto a plane, she asked the mechanics, food service and cabin cleaning crews if they had gone through metal detectors.
For every crew but one, the answer was no. All they'd done was show an ID upon entering the airport grounds.
"I'm just very unnerved," says Lee, who is based in Los Angeles. What's the point of keeping cars out of airport parking lots and subjecting passengers and flight crews to stricter scrutiny, she asks, if ground crews are boarding the planes willy-nilly?
"They're on the planes when nobody else is on there," says Lee. "They could plant anything anywhere, tell someone where to get it, and that would be it. Like, 'Hey, it's under seat 9F.' "
Lee said she's been reporting her findings to other flight attendants and to pilots. "They can't believe it," she said, and some of them are relaying the
information to union reps.
Another L.A.-based United flight attendant I spoke to says she plans to notify federal officials.
"I don't feel comfortable or secure, and I'm hoping to get it changed," she says. She, like Lee, asked that I not use her name. They're afraid they'll lose their jobs.
The image of hundreds of thousands of unscreened ground crews boarding planes
across the United States is unsettling enough. Just as scary, there is no consistent security policy from airline to airline or airport to airport.
A San Francisco International Airport spokesman told me it's "logistically
impossible" to subject ground crews to metal detection screenings, so they're doing background checks and reissuing ID badges.
A source familiar with security measures at LAX told me he was under the impression that more and more service employees were being checked with a metal detection wand before boarding planes. But Lee, the United flight
attendant, reports only one instance in eight days in which a ground crew got that treatment.
You'd think the FAA would make sure everybody was on the same page. But a
spokesman says it is up to airlines and airports to administer security on their own.
Any of this make you eager to take to the sky?
In the interest of clarification, and for a response to the concerns of the United Airlines flight attendants, I put in a call to United spokesman Alan Wayne.
A half-minute into our conversation, he asked if I was the guy who wrote the column last Friday about holes in air security.
Yes, I said.
"That was some cheap shot at us," he said. "I really have nothing further to
say to you."
And then he hung up.
A cheap shot?
I wrote a column pointing out that before getting on a Northwest Airlines flight from Minneapolis to Los Angeles, I met a woman who had carried pepper spray through three airport checkpoints. I also noted that the security team was half asleep when my carry-on bags went through on the belt.
I wasn't going to mention this, but the two United flight attendants quoted above have gone through security with a pair of scissors and 4- to 5-inch key ring pin since Sept. 11. Lee adds that on the tarmac level at LAX, the security guard at flight operations didn't look up from her book when Lee got off the elevator.
Your own flight attendants are a little concerned, Mr. Alan Wayne. Same as the rest of us.
As I said Friday, you're working for an industry that gouges its customers, treats its employees like they're disposable, installs the cheapest security system money can buy, then bellies up to the trough for a $15-billion bailout. If raising questions about all of that--and demanding better security in the wake of four jets being hijacked in holy war suicide missions--makes me a cheap shot artist in your little world, then c'est la vie.
But the experience does reinforce my belief that if we want safer airports and skies, we can't rely on the airlines to get it done.
We all know by now that there's no way to plug all the holes, but we've also learned we can do a lot better. For starters, is it too much to ask that the same security standards be federally imposed and enforced at every airport in the country?
And as for the National Guard troops that are being marched in, stationing them inside the airport to watch bored and underpaid security guards go through the motions isn't going to make us any safer. They're only being put there to make us think we're safer.
Put them someplace where they can make a difference, like frisking ground crews on the tarmac. Or put them to work on the biggest security hole, which is the baggage that goes into the belly of the plane and never gets checked by man or machine.
If it makes for more inconvenience, we'll have to adjust.
If fewer people fly, so be it.
If one or two airlines go under, the world will not end.
*
Steve Lopez can be reached at [email protected]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://latimes.com/news/local/la-000079574oct05.column
October 5, 2001
Steve Lopez:
Points West
Tighter Airport Security Is Just a Flight of Fancy
The missive came from United Airlines pilot Richard Bush. Passengers are being fooled, he said, if they think security has been significantly tightened since Sept. 11.
"We are doing silly things," wrote Bush, who flies out of Los Angeles. While passengers and flight crews are having disposable shavers confiscated at security checkpoints, he later told me by phone, ground crews are still boarding planes without being screened at most airports he's been to.
"My complaints have fallen on deaf ears at UAL," says Bush. "The flying public should be outraged!" Lax security, rude treatment and idiotic policies. I could write a book from the information flummoxed fliers--and the occasional pilot--are sending my way.
Despite improvements since Sept. 11, and despite the fact that air travel is
statistically safer than driving on the Hollywood Freeway, airport and airline security are still full of holes.
"Flying has never been safer since Sept. 11," California Gov. Gray Davis said the other day in a witless photo op in Sacramento, 16 National Guard troops standing behind him.
Well how reassuring is that? Wouldn't you rather hear that flying is safer than it was before Sept. 11?
If so, stationing National Guard troops inside terminals with M-16 assault rifles is not going to get it done, no matter how many toenail clippers they confiscate. In fact, arming these guys--if the guns are really loaded--is possibly the dumbest thing I've heard in six months.
Does anyone really expect a hijacker to telegraph his intentions by rushing a
checkpoint inside a terminal? If so, do we want him in a position to possibly grab the soldier's weapon, beat him over the head with it, and turn the rifle on a crowd of civilians?
This is idiotic window dressing; a security gesture no more reassuring than being asked if you packed your own bags. It's dangerous, too, in the sense that it diverts attention from what's really needed to make flying safer.
Airport and airline security are in need of a complete overhaul.
"Now is the time to rethink everything," says Peter Walsh, vice president of Mercer Management Consulting and an expert on global airport and airline security.
There are holes at every sector, says Walsh, and the public's going to have to decide whether, post-Sept. 11, it's comfortable with Band-Aid fixes.
Everything and everybody who comes into contact with the airport or a plane has to be subjected to stricter scrutiny, says Walsh. That means crews, passengers, cargo, mail, baggage and food supplies.
"Most security in the U.S., including that for baggage and cargo, is based on the simple premise that nobody would get on a flight wishing to blow it up," says Walsh.
But that changed Sept. 11, so the concern goes way beyond hijacking now.
On most domestic flights in the United States, checked luggage is not examined, and it doesn't go through a scanner before getting tossed into the belly of the plane, either.
Given the enduring threat of terrorism on our shores, is there anyone out there who doesn't want baggage scanners installed immediately, even if it means your ticket will cost a few more bucks and it'll take a little longer to board your flight?
In the meantime, instead of posing with National Guard troops and telling us how safe flying is, Gov. Davis ought to get them over to baggage handling, where they can actually do some good.
Over the long term, virtually every security position ought to be federalized, Walsh says, because if that responsibility were left to airlines, they'd cut costs whenever economic pressures hit.
Israel's El Al Airlines spends 8% of its revenue on security, 75% of which is
subsidized by the government, according to Walsh. American airliners, by contrast, pay 0.2% or 0.3% of their revenue toward security.
I don't know what the peanuts cost them, but it's got to be in the same ballpark. And yet, as Democratic U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman of Los Angeles points out, none of that $15-billion bailout for the airline industry was earmarked for security.
Using El Al as a model also means "shoring up passenger profiling" and "monitoring the actions of people with hostile intentions," says Walsh.
As for the Federal Aviation Administration, it needs to establish tougher standards and enforce them like a bulldog.
The cost for all of this will be monumental, and we're not talking about an overnight solution, says Walsh. Flying will be safer in the end, but more of a hassle. That means fewer fliers, and of the 10 major airlines in business today, Walsh expects only five or six to survive.
I, for one, am all for an overhaul. No, it won't be foolproof. We're way beyond guarantees of anything now. But given what's happened, we can't afford to do the job halfway.
"Capt. Jason Dahl of Flight 93 was an acquaintance of mine for many years,"
says Capt. Bush of United. "I have a wife and daughter I need to assure of my safety. . . . I want to get this industry and this country moving again."
*
Steve Lopez can be reached at [email protected].
http://latimes.com/news/local/la-000077581sep28.column
September 28, 2001
Steve Lopez:
Points West
Airlines Far From Their Best at Providing Sense of Security
Whatever the airlines have been doing since Sept. 11 to make flying safer, it isn't nearly enough.
On Wednesday, while checking in for a Northwest Airlines flight from Minneapolis to Los Angeles, I got singled out to go stand in another line for a thorough inspection of the bag I was checking.
That's the good news. I was flying alone, had a one-way ticket, and had purchased it that day, which understandably set off a few alarms. But while waiting in the second line, the woman in front of me had a story that'll make you want to go Greyhound. Within 10 days of the terrorist attacks, Donna Breslin had carried a can of pepper spray through security checkpoints at
airports in Oklahoma City, Houston and New Orleans.
No one spotted it.
"I didn't even remember that I had it with me until I reached into my briefcase for something and saw it there," said Breslin, who lives in Oklahoma City and oversees clinical drug trials for pharmaceutical companies.
She carries pepper spray for protection, but usually leaves it home when she flies.
You guys have got a problem, she told a Continental Airlines ticket agent and
an airport security officer on her next trip through Oklahoma City. Breslin said the security guy told her a pepper canister looks just like lipstick on the scanner, so it doesn't necessarily get flagged.
"I have to fly for a living, and it scares me to death that they overlook this," says Breslin.
When Breslin was cleared to go in Minneapolis, I set my bag on the counter
and a nice gent went through every last inch of it. As he did, another agent called to him.
"Hey Jack, is ammo OK?"
The second agent held up a box of shells for Jack to see, and I'm assuming, or at least hoping, that the passenger in question was a mere hunter. Well, Jack didn't know if ammo was OK, which is a little scary by itself, so he radioed for someone to render a verdict.
Do I get an opinion on this? I asked an agent. Because as a general rule, I would say no to live ammo. It doesn't matter that it's going to be locked up in the belly of the plane. I just don't want it in the air with me.
I'm not sure how the matter was resolved, but here's another white-knuckle detail. Although my check-in bag was thoroughly inspected, my two carry-ons weren't even opened. I put them on the belt at the next checkpoint, and the two guys at the X-ray monitor didn't even appear to be looking at the screen.
This is what they call high alert?
If this is as good as it gets in a time of crisis, they ought to ban all carry-ons, because neither the system nor the people in place are adequate to the task.
"We will not surrender our freedom to travel," President Bush said Thursday
in a federal take-to-the-skies promotion in Chicago. He was standing in front of planes from American and United. Get it? America united?
Bush said he's going to get more federal marshals on planes, seal the cockpit doors, and put the federal government in charge of airport security.
This is reassuring to fliers only up to the point where two Air Force generals have clearance to order commercial airliners shot out of the sky if there appears to be a threat to a U.S. city.
Who knows how close we might have come Thursday, when two F-16 fighter planes
escorted an Air Canada plane back to Los Angeles after some lunatic allegedly
smoked in the bathroom and then threatened American passengers.
As for Bush's plan to make the skies friendly again, here's a question: While
we're waiting for it to happen, can't the airlines do anything besides grovel for public handouts?
These are the free-market champions of deregulation who crushed upstart competition. The people who stick it to customers at every opportunity. The same ones who made cut-rate, inept security the industry standard even when they were sitting on sky-high piles of cash, most of which was pocketed by the CEOs.
And then they were in line for a $15-billion bailout even as they planned to stiff their own employees. Northwest and American both announced without shame that they were invoking an emergency clause and refusing to pay severance to a combined 30,000 employees they were dumping, a decision they're reconsidering under pressure.
And on top of all this, they've got an attitude.
Well before Sept. 11, my wife and I had scheduled a trip for early October on
American. I happen to have flown so many miles on American, I've got platinum status.
So my wife calls and says due to the obvious concerns about safety, and the uncertainty of work schedules resulting from the possible start of World War III, we might like to reschedule.
One agent tells her one thing, another agent gets snippy and tells her another, and the bottom line is if we make a change in our plans, they'll nick us for $100 per ticket.
How's that jingle go?
Doing what we do best?
*
Steve Lopez can be reached at [email protected].
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://latimes.com/news/local/la-000078980oct03.column
October 3, 2001
Steve Lopez:
Points West
Unscreened Ground Crews Add to Flying Jitters
She flew eight straight days ending Sunday, and each time the United Airlines flight attendant got onto a plane, she asked the mechanics, food service and cabin cleaning crews if they had gone through metal detectors.
For every crew but one, the answer was no. All they'd done was show an ID upon entering the airport grounds.
"I'm just very unnerved," says Lee, who is based in Los Angeles. What's the point of keeping cars out of airport parking lots and subjecting passengers and flight crews to stricter scrutiny, she asks, if ground crews are boarding the planes willy-nilly?
"They're on the planes when nobody else is on there," says Lee. "They could plant anything anywhere, tell someone where to get it, and that would be it. Like, 'Hey, it's under seat 9F.' "
Lee said she's been reporting her findings to other flight attendants and to pilots. "They can't believe it," she said, and some of them are relaying the
information to union reps.
Another L.A.-based United flight attendant I spoke to says she plans to notify federal officials.
"I don't feel comfortable or secure, and I'm hoping to get it changed," she says. She, like Lee, asked that I not use her name. They're afraid they'll lose their jobs.
The image of hundreds of thousands of unscreened ground crews boarding planes
across the United States is unsettling enough. Just as scary, there is no consistent security policy from airline to airline or airport to airport.
A San Francisco International Airport spokesman told me it's "logistically
impossible" to subject ground crews to metal detection screenings, so they're doing background checks and reissuing ID badges.
A source familiar with security measures at LAX told me he was under the impression that more and more service employees were being checked with a metal detection wand before boarding planes. But Lee, the United flight
attendant, reports only one instance in eight days in which a ground crew got that treatment.
You'd think the FAA would make sure everybody was on the same page. But a
spokesman says it is up to airlines and airports to administer security on their own.
Any of this make you eager to take to the sky?
In the interest of clarification, and for a response to the concerns of the United Airlines flight attendants, I put in a call to United spokesman Alan Wayne.
A half-minute into our conversation, he asked if I was the guy who wrote the column last Friday about holes in air security.
Yes, I said.
"That was some cheap shot at us," he said. "I really have nothing further to
say to you."
And then he hung up.
A cheap shot?
I wrote a column pointing out that before getting on a Northwest Airlines flight from Minneapolis to Los Angeles, I met a woman who had carried pepper spray through three airport checkpoints. I also noted that the security team was half asleep when my carry-on bags went through on the belt.
I wasn't going to mention this, but the two United flight attendants quoted above have gone through security with a pair of scissors and 4- to 5-inch key ring pin since Sept. 11. Lee adds that on the tarmac level at LAX, the security guard at flight operations didn't look up from her book when Lee got off the elevator.
Your own flight attendants are a little concerned, Mr. Alan Wayne. Same as the rest of us.
As I said Friday, you're working for an industry that gouges its customers, treats its employees like they're disposable, installs the cheapest security system money can buy, then bellies up to the trough for a $15-billion bailout. If raising questions about all of that--and demanding better security in the wake of four jets being hijacked in holy war suicide missions--makes me a cheap shot artist in your little world, then c'est la vie.
But the experience does reinforce my belief that if we want safer airports and skies, we can't rely on the airlines to get it done.
We all know by now that there's no way to plug all the holes, but we've also learned we can do a lot better. For starters, is it too much to ask that the same security standards be federally imposed and enforced at every airport in the country?
And as for the National Guard troops that are being marched in, stationing them inside the airport to watch bored and underpaid security guards go through the motions isn't going to make us any safer. They're only being put there to make us think we're safer.
Put them someplace where they can make a difference, like frisking ground crews on the tarmac. Or put them to work on the biggest security hole, which is the baggage that goes into the belly of the plane and never gets checked by man or machine.
If it makes for more inconvenience, we'll have to adjust.
If fewer people fly, so be it.
If one or two airlines go under, the world will not end.
*
Steve Lopez can be reached at [email protected]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://latimes.com/news/local/la-000079574oct05.column
October 5, 2001
Steve Lopez:
Points West
Tighter Airport Security Is Just a Flight of Fancy
The missive came from United Airlines pilot Richard Bush. Passengers are being fooled, he said, if they think security has been significantly tightened since Sept. 11.
"We are doing silly things," wrote Bush, who flies out of Los Angeles. While passengers and flight crews are having disposable shavers confiscated at security checkpoints, he later told me by phone, ground crews are still boarding planes without being screened at most airports he's been to.
"My complaints have fallen on deaf ears at UAL," says Bush. "The flying public should be outraged!" Lax security, rude treatment and idiotic policies. I could write a book from the information flummoxed fliers--and the occasional pilot--are sending my way.
Despite improvements since Sept. 11, and despite the fact that air travel is
statistically safer than driving on the Hollywood Freeway, airport and airline security are still full of holes.
"Flying has never been safer since Sept. 11," California Gov. Gray Davis said the other day in a witless photo op in Sacramento, 16 National Guard troops standing behind him.
Well how reassuring is that? Wouldn't you rather hear that flying is safer than it was before Sept. 11?
If so, stationing National Guard troops inside terminals with M-16 assault rifles is not going to get it done, no matter how many toenail clippers they confiscate. In fact, arming these guys--if the guns are really loaded--is possibly the dumbest thing I've heard in six months.
Does anyone really expect a hijacker to telegraph his intentions by rushing a
checkpoint inside a terminal? If so, do we want him in a position to possibly grab the soldier's weapon, beat him over the head with it, and turn the rifle on a crowd of civilians?
This is idiotic window dressing; a security gesture no more reassuring than being asked if you packed your own bags. It's dangerous, too, in the sense that it diverts attention from what's really needed to make flying safer.
Airport and airline security are in need of a complete overhaul.
"Now is the time to rethink everything," says Peter Walsh, vice president of Mercer Management Consulting and an expert on global airport and airline security.
There are holes at every sector, says Walsh, and the public's going to have to decide whether, post-Sept. 11, it's comfortable with Band-Aid fixes.
Everything and everybody who comes into contact with the airport or a plane has to be subjected to stricter scrutiny, says Walsh. That means crews, passengers, cargo, mail, baggage and food supplies.
"Most security in the U.S., including that for baggage and cargo, is based on the simple premise that nobody would get on a flight wishing to blow it up," says Walsh.
But that changed Sept. 11, so the concern goes way beyond hijacking now.
On most domestic flights in the United States, checked luggage is not examined, and it doesn't go through a scanner before getting tossed into the belly of the plane, either.
Given the enduring threat of terrorism on our shores, is there anyone out there who doesn't want baggage scanners installed immediately, even if it means your ticket will cost a few more bucks and it'll take a little longer to board your flight?
In the meantime, instead of posing with National Guard troops and telling us how safe flying is, Gov. Davis ought to get them over to baggage handling, where they can actually do some good.
Over the long term, virtually every security position ought to be federalized, Walsh says, because if that responsibility were left to airlines, they'd cut costs whenever economic pressures hit.
Israel's El Al Airlines spends 8% of its revenue on security, 75% of which is
subsidized by the government, according to Walsh. American airliners, by contrast, pay 0.2% or 0.3% of their revenue toward security.
I don't know what the peanuts cost them, but it's got to be in the same ballpark. And yet, as Democratic U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman of Los Angeles points out, none of that $15-billion bailout for the airline industry was earmarked for security.
Using El Al as a model also means "shoring up passenger profiling" and "monitoring the actions of people with hostile intentions," says Walsh.
As for the Federal Aviation Administration, it needs to establish tougher standards and enforce them like a bulldog.
The cost for all of this will be monumental, and we're not talking about an overnight solution, says Walsh. Flying will be safer in the end, but more of a hassle. That means fewer fliers, and of the 10 major airlines in business today, Walsh expects only five or six to survive.
I, for one, am all for an overhaul. No, it won't be foolproof. We're way beyond guarantees of anything now. But given what's happened, we can't afford to do the job halfway.
"Capt. Jason Dahl of Flight 93 was an acquaintance of mine for many years,"
says Capt. Bush of United. "I have a wife and daughter I need to assure of my safety. . . . I want to get this industry and this country moving again."
*
Steve Lopez can be reached at [email protected].