Last Sunday, airline security was especially on my mind. My daughter, Ginny, was departing with a group of her fellow UW Evening-MBA students for a 10-day excursion to Delhi, India. And I was leaving the same afternoon for a quick trip to Atlanta via Detroit. It was the first time I had flown since the Christmas Day incident on the Detroit-bound flight. I was curious about what, if any changes, I would see in security procedures.
My daughter wasn’t particularly concerned about her safety aboard the long flight or during her stay in an unfamiliar city. I had done some research and discovered that India was under a “Travel Alert” because of possible terrorism against Westerners. But I also realized that in a city of 10 million, for practical purposes, her chance of encountering a terrorist was about the same as her chances of meeting up with a mugger on State Street.
After dropping my daughter off at Grainger Hall to join her classmates for the bus to O’Hare, I quickly did my packing. I had a 3.5-ounce bottle of contact solution; Regulations say no more than a 3-ounce container is allowed in a carry-on. The slightly-too-large bottle was all I had, so I included it in the quart-sized plastic bag used for carry-on liquids.
The security procedures at the Dane County Regional Airport didn’t seem to have changed — show ID and boarding pass, shoes and coat off, laptop out. No one noticed my excessive nervousness over the 3.5 ounce bottle, nor did they discover the bottle itself. When our Detroit flight was about to be boarded, I noticed two vinyl-gloved TSA agents with a portable cart setting up next to the boarding agent.
I watched them and tried to figure out what they were going to do — maybe test suspicious-looking passengers to see if they were wholesome Midwesterners? (“Sir, can you tell me who the Green Bay Packers are playing today?”)
They checked a lot of boarding passengers, but the best I could tell was that they were just checking to see if the name on the boarding pass matched that of the ID. Not sure how valuable that particular secondary search would be. Who cares if someone up to no good has a valid ID or a fake one?
Wait, I don’t want to be marked as one who tries to figure out how to beat the security system. On second thought, I think the clever TSA strategy is to keep the bad guys guessing by changing procedures. Just when it looks like all they’re doing is matching IDS, they start searching carry-on luggage at the gate, testing the liquid in any 3.5 once bottles, while letting the legal 3-once bottles through.
The two TSA agents didn’t seem to be “profiling.” In fact, they checked the young blonde woman ahead of me while scarcely giving me a second glance, even though they surely had noted me lurking behind them and taking notes in anticipation of writing this column.
Some other observations on travel, though not necessarily security-related:
First Observation
As I flew to Atlanta I wondered if my daughter, flying to Delhi, India, via London, had access to the GPS-position maps international flights usually feature. I had heard they now turn them off, at least for the final phase of the flight. If someone is going to blow up a plane, he will be forced to do it without knowing if he is over water or over a metropolis. That is … unless he has a handheld GPS.
I believe this is one of the electronic devices you’re not supposed to use in flight. But maybe a terrorist wouldn’t know that. Do they work aboard airliners? I can tell you, yes they do.
Once, before I understood that they were prohibited in flight, I tested out my portable GPS on a cross-country flight. Holding it up to the airplane’s window, it soon got satellite signals and showed me we were overflying Denver. It was very cool to see the icon of an automobile screaming along over the map at 560 mph.
When I plugged in a Denver address it became hopelessly befuddled trying to recalculate a route.
Another Observation
On my Atlanta flight, I asked the college student sitting next to me if I could buy him a beer. He accepted and I discovered that Delta (now almost completely merged with Northwest) no longer accepts cash in flight for drinks, snack boxes or earphones. The flight attendant pulled out a little credit card reader and tried to charge me for a beer and a small bottle of wine. She was unfamiliar with the new device, so passenger confidentiality went by the wayside as she called loudly to the other flight attendant, “How do I charge this guy for a wine and a beer on this thing?”
Other Parting Observations of Note
- The Delta flight was in a brand new Boeing 737 and I actually watched the Packers lose 45-51 on my seatback TV.
- I have an Amazon Kindle that I really like, especially when traveling. I can download lots of reading material in one device. But one disadvantage of any e-book reader that I haven’t seen mentioned in reviews is the fact that, like any electronic device, it must be turned off for take-off and landing. Just as you’re getting to the end of that whodunit and with 30 minutes before you arrive at the gate, you have to turn it off.
- When I got to my hotel In Atlanta, I checked the Web site Flightaware.com and saw that my daughter’s flight was over the North Atlantic at 38,000 feet, going 486 knots and 3.4 hours from London. Presumably she was safely aboard, unless she had been bumped for concealing a 3.5 ounce bottle of contact solution. But … she would know better than to try that.
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