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Old 07-20-2004, 02:32 PM   #1
breakingnews
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frightening flight experience

Not sure if this has been discussed yet, but a co-worker shared this link with me. Absolutely terrifying story, if it is true. It makes you wonder the state of the willingness of our country's citizens to go above and beyond in the event of scare like this.

http://www.womenswallstreet.com/WWS/...&articleid=711

And then her follow up:

http://www.womenswallstreet.com/WWS/...&articleid=716

Apologies if this has already gone around. I realize it's about a week old.
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Old 07-20-2004, 02:36 PM   #2
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Fourth thread on the page man... but we did not have the followup. Reading now.
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Old 07-20-2004, 02:43 PM   #3
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OK the followup confirms some details, but the more striking part of it is the quotes from people connected to the airlines, such as:

Quote:
According to Mark Bogosian, B-757/767 pilot for American Airlines, "The incident you wrote about, and incidents like it, occur more than you like to think. It is a 'dirty little secret' that all of us, as crew members, have known about for quite some time."
Oof.
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Old 07-20-2004, 02:47 PM   #4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Undertoad
OK the followup confirms some details, but the more striking part of it is the quotes from people connected to the airlines, such as:



Oof.
Yeah, I notice that's what another pilot said - that these incidents (dry runs) were common and the topic of much industry gossip. Why are they not being reported? Public awareness is likely the best deterrent (though not always the most rational or logical - instead I imagine it would create quite a state of panic).
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Old 07-20-2004, 03:05 PM   #5
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I still don't see the usefulness of the dry runs unless they're to create terror in and of themselves. The dry runs tip off the Feds to other kinds of attacks and "waste" personel. It really looks more like a test of the aircrews. Either way it is scarey stuff.
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Old 07-20-2004, 04:29 PM   #6
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Quote:
Rand K. Peck, captain for a major U.S. airline, sent the following email: "I just finished reading Annie Jacobsen's article, TERROR IN THE SKIES, AGAIN? I only wish that it had been written by a reporter from The Washington Post or The New York Times. My response would have been one of shock as to how insensitive of them to dare write such a piece. After all, citizens or not, don't these people have rights too?
Seems Capt. Peck is more worried about noncitizens rights(feelings) than airline safety. Wrong priorities, methinks.
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Old 07-20-2004, 04:42 PM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce
Seems Capt. Peck is more worried about noncitizens rights(feelings) than airline safety. Wrong priorities, methinks.
Whatever happened to "presumed innocent till proven guilty"? Or does that only apply to Christians?
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Old 07-20-2004, 05:45 PM   #8
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"The incident you wrote about, and incidents like it, occur more than you like to think. It is a 'dirty little secret' that all of us, as crew members, have known about for quite some time."

I tend to think this quote is taken a bit out of context. In its current place, the editor makes it sound like the airlines are hiding some deep secret of ongoing terrorist plots that they can legally do nothing about. I'm sure a lot of incidents like this happen in which suspcisious activity causes flight delays,
like people shaving in the restroom or people getting sick who don't speak English, but I doubt any of them are real security risks. Do airlines get probed? I'm sure they did, but I noticed that we never learned much about the original 19 hijackers and their practice attempts, so as the public, we don't quite know how it works, anyways.

I would love to know what the actual events were on that flight and the findings of the authorities. This person's perception of it makes it sound absolutely horrific and, if that is the way it all went down, I would have been scared shitless and very concerned for my life. So how come no one else on the flight has mentioned anything? How come this hasn't hit the media? Why didn't this make the same news the way the previous incidents I linked did?

I keep thinking back to a photograph I saw in the Los Angeles Times called "Falling" by Pulitzer Prize winning AP photographer Richard Drew. It's a photograph of a man, his body is stretched out, one knee at a right angle, as if he's lying on a couch, watching television in the living room, relaxing and enjoying life. But he's not. It's a photograph of a man falling from one of the top floors of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. This man jumped to his death, most likely because it seemed a less painful way to die than being engulfed in flames.

This picture is haunting. For a long time I kept it in my office. I still think about this picture and I wonder about this man -- his daily life, what he did for work, what he did for play, what his thoughts were about the world. I think about this person. I think about the meaning of "dry run." And then I think about what it means to be politically correct. And I keep coming up blank.


This is a really bizarre way to end this article and it really bugs me. I can't pinpoint why, but this woman sounds really paranoid to me, even if it is just because she kept this picture in her office, has never been able to get that man's life out of her mind, and blames his tragic death on rampant political correctness in our country. Something about the article, the way its stated, and the heavy political overtones make me question exactly what happened.

"So even if Northwest Airlines searched two of the men on board my Northwest flight, they couldn't search the other 12 because they would have already filled a government-imposed quota."

This is a serious problem, but not one that arises out of rules regarding profiling. A terrorist out of the Middle East can just as easily get a fake passport, shave clean, and walk onto an airline and not ever look as if he needs to be searched nor be flagged by the security system to be checked. The real problem is that there isn't enough money for the security needed to search every person. If each of these people were searched and they really did all have a single component to a weapon, how would searching all of them have helped? Each bag that goes on board an airplane is sniffed with an explosives detector and each carryon bag goes through a scanner that detects oganic material (explosives). What would have helped, here? Removing political correctness and searching each person with an Arab name?

So she asked me some of the questions that she had wanted to ask him: Where exactly did this band of 14 musicians play? What was the name of the band? Who booked the band and what kind of music did they play? Did anyone follow up and actually witness these 14 men performing at their desert casino gig?

I don't think this is any of her business and here is the reason why:

I asked a friend who is a local news correspondent if there were any arrests at LAX that day. There weren't.

Sounds like a lot of nothing to me.

But I wonder, if 19 terrorists can learn to fly airplanes into buildings, couldn't 14 terrorists learn to play instruments?

I love that line.
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Old 07-20-2004, 10:22 PM   #9
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Ignoring the most likely perpetrator of a hijacking and/or terrorist act because it might be deemed politically incorrect = Really Fucking Stupid and We Deserve to Die

And how do you identify that likely perpetrator? The guy from Saudi Arabia here in the US on a visitor's passport? What about the guy from the Phillipenes here on a work visa? How about the man from Syria with a fake driver's license that has been marked as a US citizen in the flight ticketing system? Remember the British citizen that placed a bomb in his shoe and intended to blow up the plane? He wasn't checked, nor would he have been had we been checking all men from the Middle East aged 20-40.

We have limited TSA security resources. I understand the problem of ignoring the obvious, but concentrating on one group of people simply opens holes everywhere else. How about we make it difficult for anyone to bring a weapon on board?
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Old 07-21-2004, 03:25 AM   #10
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Kitsune, you make a lot of sense.
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Old 07-21-2004, 02:43 PM   #11
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kitsune
Ignoring the most likely perpetrator of a hijacking and/or terrorist act because it might be deemed politically incorrect = Really ------- Stupid and We Deserve to Die

And how do you identify that likely perpetrator? The guy from Saudi Arabia here in the US on a visitor's passport? What about the guy from the Phillipenes here on a work visa? How about the man from Syria with a fake driver's license that has been marked as a US citizen in the flight ticketing system? Remember the British citizen that placed a bomb in his shoe and intended to blow up the plane? He wasn't checked, nor would he have been had we been checking all men from the Middle East aged 20-40.

We have limited TSA security resources. I understand the problem of ignoring the obvious, but concentrating on one group of people simply opens holes everywhere else. How about we make it difficult for anyone to bring a weapon on board?
I'm not suggesting we ignore everyone else, I'm suggesting we don't *intentionally* exclude the most likely type of potential perp because we're afraid we'll hurt someone's feelings. Big difference.
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Old 07-21-2004, 05:34 PM   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Elspode
I'm not suggesting we ignore everyone else, I'm suggesting we don't *intentionally* exclude the most likely type of potential perp because we're afraid we'll hurt someone's feelings. Big difference.
Indubitably. :thumpsup:
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Old 07-21-2004, 11:46 AM   #13
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Remember the British citizen that placed a bomb in his shoe and intended to blow up the plane? He wasn't checked, nor would he have been had we been checking all men from the Middle East aged 20-40.

If I recall, he definitely LOOKED Middle-Eastern. That's all that counts, he would have been searched if a widespread "search all men of Middle-Eastern descent" order were in place.
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Old 07-21-2004, 01:53 PM   #14
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If I recall, he definitely LOOKED Middle-Eastern. That's all that counts, he would have been searched if a widespread "search all men of Middle-Eastern descent" order were in place.

This is silly. "Pardon me sir, you have dark skin and that means you have been flagged for security purposes. All the people with pale skin may go ahead and board."

I'm not pulling the "politically correct card" here, because about everytime I go into an airport, I'm the one that gets pulled aside and I don't consider it an inconvience. Its either because I have an overstuffed, suspicious bookbag as a carryon or, I dunno, maybe I just look like a terrorist. (I think the military hat and scruffy face might have something to do with it. Hmm.) Regardless, it doesn't bother me that I'm selected nearly every time and they decide to pick through my bags or sweep over me with a metal detector. If I am being selected at the X-ray line based on my looks, I don't care.

What I am saying here is that I'd like for you to go to any major airport and count how many people "look Middle Eastern" to you and tally the number that you think should be checked and I'm sure you will find that it is no small number. I admit that the most recent time I flew I glanced around at all the people who "fit the profile". The number was huge, mostly because its almost impossible to tell the difference between an Arab, an Indian, and someone from a lot of the Eastern countries. The simple matter is that there is not enough security to screen them all and, by concentrating our efforts on people "who look the part", we open the doors through security for hundreds of other methods to sneak something on board by simply changing that single aspect.

If you fly a lot, you know they already profile people, but more on suspicious patterns rather than skin color. Visiting with a passport? You're going to get checked. Switch carriers midway through your trip? You're probably going to get checked. One-way ticket? Expect to get lots of little 'X's on your boarding pass. Person under 18 who doesn't have to show proof of ID? They almost always get checked if they're over the age of 12. Even the technical field workers at my office that make regular trips to and from DC on a schedule get checked everytime they fly. Frustrated, they asked why and the response they got was that because they fly as a group on a regular basis, they're acting in a suspicious way and the system flags them for security reasons.

Is this perfect? Hell no. But I think its better than what we had before, which was essentially nothing, and I think its better than keeping the security screeners busy with the huge group of people that happen to have darker skin than an albino Finn in the wintertime. The random selection is there to both break the expected pattern and prevent human error -- there is a reason the computer makes half of the decisions.

Want all Arab-looking people checked? There is a really easy way to solve this, I suppose, but no one is willing to do it: pay more for your airline ticket and wait in longer lines. Just the same way with the bomb-proof luggage containers for checked-in bags -- they've had them for years, but insurance companies did the math and figured that losing one or two planes every so many years to an onboard bomb outweighs the cost of installing the reinforced bins. Higher cost for safer flight makes customers, and the airlines, unhappy and drives down business. Its the same reason you haven't seen any of the Boeings get their wires re-done or routed outside of the center gas tanks post flight 800 -- the risk outweighs the cost. No one is willing to pay for extra security or longer lines, but anyone will dish out some extra cash to sit in a seat with a little LCD TV installed in the back of the seat in front of them. Checking everyone is impossible. Checking all people who "look Arab" is impossible and creates a very easily broken security pattern. Random, for now, is as good as it gets.

I'm not sure I get the whole "political correctness is the problem" thing, anyways. Any captain of any commercial airline has the ability to remove any passenger for any reason, stated or not. In the days after September 11th, a number of pilots requested people who "appeared suspicious" to remove themselves from the flight prior to departure. I don't remember anyone screaming back then. In the X-Ray lines, people that are checked are selected on their appearance and/or their baggage. The only random part is the check prior to boarding based on your seating pass.

but have fun collecting things that will make it through my metal detector at work and are still signficantly dangerous.

Whoa, those are freaky. I thought they passed some kind of law that required some bits of metal be included in the blades in order to set off metal detectors?

Last edited by Kitsune; 07-21-2004 at 01:56 PM.
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Old 07-21-2004, 12:11 PM   #15
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The problem is the answer is better communication between baggage screeners and law enforcement combined with some cluey guys on screening so they know what to look for today and whether someone looks suspicious or not. It is no stretch to envisage Middle Eastern, Asian African or on the odd occasion, caucasian Islamic terrorists (let's face it, noone is going to be doing a good old hostage these days, that game is over), good intel and passing it around is paramount. That said, the most likely bombers today are 20-40 men of middle eastern decent, not skewing the random searches in their direction is paramount to dereliction of duty, I said it in the other thread.

That said, I fly all the time and I know full well that airport and plane security are a goddamn joke. It is so damn easy to carry on or manufacture weaponry it's not funny, I could list 20 ways off the top of my head.
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