I'm well aware that perfect security comes at infinite cost - both money AND liberty. I am willing to pay for neither.
However, insulating people (including artificial people - corporations) from the consequences of their bad decisions leads to more bad decisions.
It is one thing to sign a waiver (say, for a dive boat) acknowledging that you might die and that you are personally responsible for that risk.
It is quite another to be sold a bill of goods.
The airlines and government make this claim all the time. They have for years. The "sterile" area, they say. (They very same one in which boxcutters were legitimate permitted items!) The same "sterile" area in which bags are pilfered, invaded, and molested.
Its the hypocrisy - and blatent fraud - that I object to Roakey. Not the fact that perfect security is unobtainable - I am well aware of that, nor do I want it or what it would cost.
However, I object mightily when our government makes knowingly false claims, then allows a private concern to make knowingly false claim and prevents them from suffering the just consequences of people's detrimental reliance on that claim!
This entire airline thing since 9/11 has been a HUGE fraud upon the flying public. It has been an assault upon our time, convenience, the security of our persons and effects - and wallets - both directly and indirectly.
The simple fact of the matter is that our security in air travel, while not perfect, has been pretty damn good in the United States. A particular weak spot - having NOTHING to do with security - was exploited on 9/11. The plan was brilliant, in its own sick, twisted way. It relied upon our belief that a person hijacking a plane wanted transportation and nothing more.
Obviously, we now know that's garbage - that a person committing that act might want to commit murder with the plane itself, not just use the passengers as negotiating tools.
But none of this - absolutely none of it - has a single thing to do with the TSA.
The TSA is a knee-jerk reaction to a non-problem, and it creates more problems than it solves. It has provided the airlines with incentives to be even bigger jerks than they have been over the last 20 years. I have personally watched service levels decline, lie counts increase, and the overall deterioration of the industry over the last 20 years. Until the last two or three years I was a VERY frequent user of their services.
I swore off air travel after 9/11, when the insanity started. The airlines were in trouble before 9/11, you know. The service levels and ticket games had begun - refusing to allow stand-by flying, charging $50 or even $100 to change a departure time even within the same day, voiding tickets if you missed the original plane for any reason (forcing you to buy a full-price, unrestricted coach fare to get where you needed to go), etc.
Not long ago I could walk into an airport with a ticket from Atlanta to Chicago for a flight tomorrow, stroll up to a departure gate with it in hand, and if there were seats available at the last minute get on board and endorse the ticket over. Even if the airline I had the ticket on wasn't the same on I was proposing to fly upon! This was true due to the fact that tickets were fungible, and the airline I flew could endorse that ticket back to the originator and receive face value - or darn close to it - from that company. Tickets were, effectively, money. I did this literally DOZENS of times over the years when my meeting was done early - or later - than planned. I NEVER worried about making the plane, because the next one - assumign it wasn't completely full - was just fine. As long as I had paid, I had a seat - if not now for some reason, like a huge traffic jam in Atlanta, as soon as there was one open on that route.
Now tickets are nothing. In fact, there are no tickets any more, or at least, there won't be soon. Now it is just a registration in a computer. You know why? Its not about cost savings Roak, although that is what the airlines claim. This is all about making tickets NOT fungible, so that you cannot use them in any way EXCEPT on the exact flight you originally booked!
Its a SCAM Roak. So is the carry on baggage nonsense. So is the 50lb weight nonsense. So is the "scuba gear surcharge". So is the TSA. Its ALL just a means to provide you less and less for more and more.
Why were the airlines in trouble? Because people were getting tired of it. Business folks were using videoconferencing - and the internet - instead of getting on planes. Why? Get stranded in Atlanta when you're based in Chicago with the airline lady telling you with a sweet smile that your $600 ticket is worthless because you got caught in traffic or your meeting ran 15 minutes over your planned time, and it'll be $1,100 to get on the next flight - and you will do your damndest not to have THAT happen to you again.
THAT is why the airlines were in trouble Roak. What we've done, post 9-11, is give them a pass on their HORRIBLE business decisions, and the screwing they have laid upon all of us as consumers. We did not bail them out because of terrorism - we bailed them out because they made a bunch of bad business decisions and they went whining to some Senators and Reps and demanded money "or else".
THAT is what happened Roak, and it, and all surrounding it, is one of the classic rip-offs of our collective pocketbooks in the last five years. When you add to that the insults heaped upon by the TSA nonsense, its even more outrageous.
