Let’s hope so. I think that Mica is going to clean house.
5 thoughts on “Borrowed Time For TSA?”
I certainly hope he does. But my general mood these days is “show me” – I’m thoroughly sick of facade-talk.
One thing that is a trifle bothersome to me is when people point to the Israeli methods and think of their methods as panacea. The major Israeli airport is about the size of, and deals with the same number of people, a small US Regional airport.
I am not convinced that their methods can be scaled up to Boston-Logan, LAX, or JFK. Which is not to say they couldn’t be useful.
That would be fantastic.
“One thing that is a trifle bothersome to me is when people point to the Israeli methods and think of their methods as panacea. The major Israeli airport is about the size of, and deals with the same number of people, a small US Regional airport. ”
So what? If you can do it for one airport you can do it for a 1000. You just need more people.
Brock:
The issue is both the number of airports as well as the size of our airports (i.e. the vastly larger number of passengers processed per hour). The Israeli method takes time, and it takes space:
multiple questions are asked in a conversational tone. If the questioner’s curiosity is piqued, the person being questioned is led to a room where he/she is questioned further.
The baggage checks that are being done now will most likely remain. There simply isn’t the time or space to process the much larger number of people who go through airports like JFK, LAX, Logan etc. The delays would be crushing, I think.
There’s another factor with the Israeli approach: It requires intelligent screeners. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I don’t think the US government’s affirmative action hiring policies select for high intelligence.
I haven’t travelled to or through the US for over 5 years and that is exclusively because of the TSA horror stories I’ve read about and seen on YouTube etc. I literally go the other way around the world rather than go through US airports.
Which is so very sad as I loved my times in the States, as the people I met were almost always charming, polite, warm and welcoming.
In my humble opinion, the TSA does America no favours.
I certainly hope he does. But my general mood these days is “show me” – I’m thoroughly sick of facade-talk.
One thing that is a trifle bothersome to me is when people point to the Israeli methods and think of their methods as panacea. The major Israeli airport is about the size of, and deals with the same number of people, a small US Regional airport.
I am not convinced that their methods can be scaled up to Boston-Logan, LAX, or JFK. Which is not to say they couldn’t be useful.
That would be fantastic.
“One thing that is a trifle bothersome to me is when people point to the Israeli methods and think of their methods as panacea. The major Israeli airport is about the size of, and deals with the same number of people, a small US Regional airport. ”
So what? If you can do it for one airport you can do it for a 1000. You just need more people.
Brock:
The issue is both the number of airports as well as the size of our airports (i.e. the vastly larger number of passengers processed per hour). The Israeli method takes time, and it takes space:
multiple questions are asked in a conversational tone. If the questioner’s curiosity is piqued, the person being questioned is led to a room where he/she is questioned further.
The baggage checks that are being done now will most likely remain. There simply isn’t the time or space to process the much larger number of people who go through airports like JFK, LAX, Logan etc. The delays would be crushing, I think.
There’s another factor with the Israeli approach: It requires intelligent screeners. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I don’t think the US government’s affirmative action hiring policies select for high intelligence.
I haven’t travelled to or through the US for over 5 years and that is exclusively because of the TSA horror stories I’ve read about and seen on YouTube etc. I literally go the other way around the world rather than go through US airports.
Which is so very sad as I loved my times in the States, as the people I met were almost always charming, polite, warm and welcoming.
In my humble opinion, the TSA does America no favours.