It appears I clicked the “publish” button just a little too quickly on my post about the new TSA rules. A few minutes after I posted that, a new post appeared on KLM’s blog documenting the changes. The biggest change? No more 1-hour before landing rule. From the looks of it, the TSA decided that requiring passengers to stay seated with no entertainment during the last hour of flight was just stupid.
Bags will still be physically checked at random gates and passengers may be patted down before the flight. This too is kind of dumb but I would rather go through the pat down than be stuck in my seat during the last hour of the flight.
What does this move really mean though? It means the TSA is playing a guessing game on how to prevent attacks and that they really have no idea what to do. Ignorance is bliss when it is someone else undergoing the treatment I guess.
This is one of those situations where a certain amount of “profiling” makes sense. Arab nationals from certain parts of the world should be subjected to higher scrutiny, especially on international flights to the U.S. That doesn’t mean we all shouldn’t be checked (there are more than enough crazy U.S. citizens…of all ethnic and religious backgrounds), but it seems like an obvious and simple measure to pay more attention to travelers who fit the more obvious profile of a potential threat. I understand the racial/ethnic/religious concerns with taking this approach, but if I were a citizen of a country that has an extremism problem, I really couldn’t blame countries for treating our travelers with more caution.
Can’t say I disagree with you Jeff. We need to take a page out of the Israeli playbook and do real behavior analysis and some profiling. It is obvious that the simple checking of identification papers under a black light is not working.