[thechat] Airlines

Martin martin at members.evolt.org
Thu Sep 13 16:50:35 CDT 2001


Ben Dyer wrote on 13/9/01 10:30 pm

>At 02:35 PM 9/13/2001, you wrote:
>>I didn't put any more thought into this until she pointed it
>>out to me, but do you not think that at least some of the blame should rest
>>with the greedy corporations that value their profit over the nations
>>safety?

There are 2 parts to this:
1) The simple profit/demand thing - airline customers demanded that
     getting a plane be as easy as getting a bus, so airlines had to give 
that

2) No-one anticipated the risk - the anticipated demand of hijackers
    being 'take us to $COUNTRY', which only really has Canada & Mexico
    as options. No-one anticipated the possibility of using a plane as a
    weapon.

I think that if domestic flights were subject to the same security as
international ones, the risk would have been much lower.

I don't think the full level of Israeli security checks on passengers
is necessary, but something approaching international levels of
security would have helped.

>I was reminded of this fact Tuesday on ABC News.  One of their aviation 
>correspondents was talking about airline security and was comparing 
>security on El Al (the Israeli national airline) versus the various 
>American airlines.  He said that if all airlines in America followed the 
>same tactics as El Al, this sort of problem would probably never occur, 
>but, they would only be able to do 1/4 to 1/5 of the 
>passengers/flights/business that they would before.

El Al was the only airline which kept flying to Israel this week,
because they have robust security. They (like I think all the Middle
Eastern airlines) have sealed flight-decks. You just cannot get in
from the passenger cabin.

Cheers
Martin

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