IN THE NEWS
I didn't post last week because of a business trip. Sure, it was busy, but the real problem was, believe it or not, lack of Internet access, both at the hotel and at the trade show where our company had a booth. Unbelievable, and highly frustrating.
There was an incident during the trip that highlighted, yet again, the vulnerabilities that still exist in airline security. On the way home, the airline I was traveling got word of an oncoming storm. You'd think a routine affair like bad weather would be easy to handle, but the airline had only one employee working the desk at the terminal. Because of delays, I was actually switched to a flight that had been scheduled to leave earlier, but was delayed by the storm warnings. The plane had been boarded and de-planed twice, so you can imagine the mood of the passengers.
What concerned me, though, was the burden put on this one airline representative at the gate. She was fielding questions, handling complaints, booking passengers on and off the flight, and, inexplicably, policing the open door to the plane. Meanwhile, impatient passengers were walking on the plane without checking in again, so the airline rep had to regularly drop what she was doing and chase them down before they seated themselves again. She didn't catch all of them. In fact, someone booked for a later flight helped himself to a seat on this one.
I've had some mishaps with the TSA before. For example, I absentmindedly carried a Swiss army knife that I normally keep in my laptop case onto a flight. Surprisingly, the screeners missed it.
No security can ever be perfect, particularly when processing the number of passengers and bags at the rate the TSA does. However, the incident last week made me see the strands the airlines contribute to the security web, and what happens when their contributions are weakened.
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