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t does not take a genius to figure out that traveling by airplane has become pretty much a nightmare since the new rules of August 2006. Why? Because it takes no effort at all to end up with 3 little 3-ounce containers of something. This is true whether one is a woman or a man. Shaving cream and toothpaste and deodorant are all very typical for a man; and one is already up to three and we haven’t even gotten to cologne or solution for contact lenses or any form of over-the-counter liquid medication with which a person has typically traveled. Left out also are the various sprays and gels that women and men use for their hair. Then there is the fact that women typically like to carry some form of lotion.
Before August 2006, the typical person traveling easily carried at least 4, probably 5, of the 8 items mentioned in the preceding paragraph—items that were seen as mere basics.
Then there were the little gifts of this and that, which we used to carry in our carry-on bags. They are out—unless, of course, one buys them at the airport. Gone are the simple days when could pick up a bottle of cologne or perfume at one’s favorite store in town for that special someone that one could take back in one’s carry-on luggage. Likewise for the half-bottles of wine that were such a nice treat.
Although I am one of Continental Airline’s very frequent flyers and my baggage is supposed to get priority handling, I waited 45 minutes to day for my one little small bag. When it comes to checked baggage, the only thing that being a frequent flyer gets one, at least at Continental, is a label that says one’s bags get priority to handling. The label and the reality most certainly have not met one another. My plan is to check bags about every 4th trip or so.
One of the T(ransportation) S(ecurity) A(administration) personnel informed me that people are checking cases of things to destinations that they typically carried with them in much smaller amounts on a regular basis. I gather others have the same idea, namely that is better to lose time every third or fourth trip than to do so every single time..
For anyone who has a connecting flight, carrying-on luggage often means the difference between making the next flight or missing it. Or, it makes the difference in one’s bags arriving with one at one’s final destination as opposed to one’s having to come back later and pick them up. Then there is the factor already alluded to, which is the time lost in waiting for one’s bags to arrive on the conveyor belt. 10 trips a year with a 45 minute wait for one’s luggage comes to 4 hours and 45 minutes. No wait: it comes to 9 hours 30 minutes, since there is going and returning. Thus, every three years, one loses a day of one’s life simply waiting for one’s checked bags to arrive on the conveyor belt.
Even a flight attendant said to me yesterday: “Something has got to give”. For the occasional traveler who packs just about everything in the name of anticipating one contingency after another, this individual is not much affected by the new rules. Checking bags is a part of what such a person does.
But for the frequent traveler, the 11th commandment is surely: “Thou shall exit the airport with all due speed upon getting off the plane”. Since flights almost never arrive on time, this commandment has a certain urgency to it.
Now, we know the reason the new rules, namely our safety. Since I am all for planes taking off and landing under their own power, I would be the first to admit that there is much to be said for the new rules.
Ironically, my problem is with their application. Perhaps the time has come for a permit to fly free from intense security checks—a permit that must be renewed at least once every year. In order to get such a permit, a fairly rich profile of one would be necessary.
Interestingly, such a profile is possible without giving up too much privacy. Besides, in a credit card society much of what we do and where we have been can already be determined by our credit card use. Large donations are signaled by tax reports. And traveling is signaled by two points: point of departure and point of destination.
It seeds to me, for example, that a person who flies back and forth numerous times a year between
A profile gives a general sense of what a person is like.
Can profiles trip us up? Absolutely. But anything can do that. There is no fail-safe method of preventing terrorism, short of dying.
The present arrangement for flying, though, is simply foolish. For in essence, the idea is that everyone is a terrorist until an inspection at airport security proves otherwise.
Now, a permit to be a flying passenger would be entirely voluntary. Just so, I suspect that an awful lot of frequent flyers would gladly and voluntarily submit to the kind of informed profile that it would take to get the permit simply because it would make their lives so very much simpler.
The present arrangement stems from the attitude that profiling is wrong. When it comes to airplane passengers: treating everyone exactly alike is thought to be the morally preferable state of affairs. That was perhaps plausible prior to August 2006, but not so since then. For the rules since then have effectively undermined the quality of our lives. Small gesture of kindness have been cast aside for no other reason that it is too much hassle to check bags. Little things that we have taken on the plane for years on end must be left home or purchased at the other end or in the airport. Since November 21, I have purchased a tube of toothpaste at the airport for each of the three flights that I have taken across the
Something is wrong when in order to prevent future acts of terrorism our only response is to treat each airplane passenger as if she or he were a possible terrorist until she passes a security check on the spot.
My proposal is simply why not have background security check available for those who would want a permit to fly, that is sufficiently rich that the odds of such a person turning out to be terrorist are infinitesimally small.
A person who has been lecturing around the world on breast cancer for the past 15 years might become a terrorist. It is most unlikely, however. Certainly, the story could not possibly be that he lectured on breast cancer on Tuesday and decided to blow up an airplane on Thursday. It would take a monumental event for it to turn out that a professionally active person with a morally acceptable life becomes a terrorist.
A minimum 5-year profile background check would rule out lots and lots of people initially. That is, one would have to have a 5 year history of doing a particular thing. It would not be enough that without ever harming anyone one painted for one year, went mountain climbing for another, horseback riding for another, and so on. We do not have harm here, but we also do not have stability of life style, either. I propose that stability of lifestyle be an immutable necessity for obtaining a permit to fly.
In the oddest of ways, the concern over terrorism has rightly forced us to set aside the rule of innocent until proven guilty. But the choice is not to treat each flying passenger as a terrorist or nothing at all.
Presumably, relatively few CIA or FBI agents turn out to be terrorists. So we know that there can be profiles that give us rich enough information in this regard. My proposal is simply that we use that kind of wherewithal to make traveling easier for morally decent people, all the while acknowledging that the old ground rules of innocent to proven guilty have changed.
