airline safety

Thinking outside the box on security

by Fred Smith on January 7, 2010

in Mobility, Precaution & Risk, Regulation

The Washington Post editorial, “In the wake of Flight 253, the TSA must get more anti-terrorist tools” makes a short-sighted argument for increasing resources for the TSA.  Terrorists, as we’ve seen in Iraq and elsewhere, have diversified, wreaking havoc wherever individuals congregate.  Malls, mass transit systems, sports stadia, churches all represent targets.  To focus scarce taxpayer funds on the risks of air travel alone neglects the broader terrorist threat.

Why not encourage a more active anti-terrorist role for air travelers and airlines – and enact “Good Samaritan” laws to reduce their liability?  Unfortunately, current privacy laws and anti-discrimination lawsuits have restricted their ability to augment efforts of the TSA.  Consider how airlines might have responded to 9/11. A US Michael O’Leary might well have launched a “John Wayne” or a “Nervous Nelly” option.  The first would arm passengers (and crews) for self-defense (that approach might well have minimized the killing sprees at Virginia Tech and Fort Hood).  The latter might require passengers to strip and don strait jackets for the duration of the flight.  Competition would encourage a more careful balancing of security and privacy concerns with passengers playing a creative role.  Thank God the passenger on Northwest was not forced to remain in his seat!

Why should efforts to advance public safety exclude the public?  America’s history shows numerous ways in which the citizenry has played a critical security role.  Government should play a role in defending the citizenry but your focus on the role of bureaucracy alone risks losing the creativity of travelers and airlines.  Why not encourage their involvement too?

And, given the problems already observed with both the TSA and the HAS in their preemptive efforts to alone provide security, shouldn’t the possibility of enlisting business and the citizenry in this effort be considered?

Obama Administration Undermines Airline Security and Railroad Safety: 9/11 Lessons Ignored

by Hans Bader on September 13, 2009 · 3 comments

in Labor, Mobility, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Regulation

In the aftermath of 9/11, Congress foolishly shifted airline security screening to the inept Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which has failed to detect explosive ingredients and fake bombs, in performance tests.

Now the Obama Administration is making matters even worse by undermining both airline security and railroad safety. A study found that the TSA is more than twice as likely to fail to detect a bomb as the private security firms it replaced. And TSA’s failure rate is three or four times as high as the few remaining private firms still allowed to handle airline security.

In tests, TSA failed to detect fake bombs 60 percent of the time at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, and 75 percent of the time in Los Angeles. Yet the Obama administration plans to make TSA even more bureaucratic by introducing collective bargaining, which will make it even harder to get rid of ineffective employees.

Rather than take over airline security screening, the federal government should have stepped up testing of the private companies that performed it, to weed out bad companies. President Bush initially objected to Congressional demands for a federal takeover, but knuckled under for political reasons.  Ironically, even in European countries run by Socialist parties, airline security and screening is generally in the hands of private companies, which are are usually more diligent, innovative, and efficient, as well as less bureaucratic.

The Obama administration is also undermining the security of railroad passengers by gutting an expert, highly-rated, anti-terror agency at Amtrak, which Amtrak’s unions hate, because it is not unionized.  Political cronyism also appears to be playing a role in the gutting of Amtrak’s Office of Security Strategy and Special Operations (OSSSO). Ultimately, OSSSO’s “highly-specialized officers” will likely be replaced by unionized employees with ”alarmingly low pass rates” in “basic” classes.