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View Full Version : IATA speaks? Whatever next?


rubik101
8th Sep 2011, 03:10
This in today's Gruinard, and others:
After 9/11: airports 'wasting billions' on needless security checks for passengers | World news | guardian.co.uk (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/07/airports-wasting-billions-needless-security)
How many posts on this subject, stating the blindingly obvious, have been written by us, collectively?
Profiling? Now there's a bright idea!
frequent flyer cards! Wow!
Mum's with babies, wait, get that milk analyzed......

"The number of people worldwide who are killed by Muslim-type terrorists, Al Qaeda wannabes, is maybe a few hundred outside of war zones. It's basically the same number of people who die drowning in the bathtub each year," said John Mueller, an Ohio State University professor who has written extensively about the balance between threat and expenditures in fighting terrorism.

The expensive and time-consuming screening now routine for passengers at airport boarding gates has detected plenty of knives, loaded guns and other contraband, but it has never identified a terrorist who was about to board a plane. Only 14 Americans have died in about three dozen instances of Islamic extremist terrorist plots targeted at the U.S. outside war zones since 2001 — most of them involving one or two home-grown plotters.

aterpster
8th Sep 2011, 08:18
The serious terriorists have much more patience than the average American.

Luke SkyToddler
8th Sep 2011, 09:07
Oh they aren't wasting billions at all ...

The average pax spend per head at Heathrow was around £2.80 prior to 9/11 ... nowadays, and particularly since the liquid restrictions were enforced, it's around the £8 mark. Extra £5 per pax, x 70 million per year = £350 million per annum profit at Heathrow alone ... now add Gatwick, Manchester, Stansted, Luton, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Birmingham, Newcastle ...

It's not about "wasting" billions on enhanced security checks, that's more like the money they're making from it every year.

Mechta
8th Sep 2011, 09:11
So what about the next terror group made up of Western islamic converts or cohorts of the Norwegian gunman or the next Baader-Meinhof gang. Do we wait for them to strike first?

Certainly there is plenty of time wasted and a lot of innocent people maltreated needlessly at airports, not to mention commercial pressures manipulating the 'threat' in the name of security (all the extra drinks sold in post-security shops and on-board aircraft).

What is needed is an independent assessment of risks and suitable methods of security inspection instead of the current mindless bullying of the everyday traveller.