Airlines impose new rules in wake of attack

[Gooblah]

We don't need to use airplanes for anything commercially. If you need to get to Europe, just take the QE II. And domestically? We have the friggin things called "roads".

Planes are faster transport for things like intercontinental mail and cargo which can't be delivered economically by ship (don't wanna pay the Panama Canal fee every time you wanna ship something from New York to Los Angeles).

Yet another overreaction, the problem being that these reactions build up to the point where this whole process has made air travel pretty crappy.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Never mind. Point already covered.

 

[Patroklos]

These new rules are quite over the top. I would expect nothing less from a knee jerk decision made in a matter of hours.

 

[Formaldehyde]

I agree. They seem to think that any terrorist act such as this will likely be followed by a number of other similar ones now.

Take the overreaction by many of the sick Nigerian businessman, for example.

 

[Patroklos]

I assume they are being so quick becasue the suspect has made statments to the effect that he is not alone and we should expect many such attacks in the near future.

Sounds like baseless bragging to me, but can you imagine if the government did not make such a reaction and something DID happen? No amount of reasoning would talk the screaming heads from every corner down.

 

[Formaldehyde]

I think it is because the US government got burned so badly on 9/11 by not quickly assessing whether there may be other hijacked planes and reacting accordingly. So they now act as though any terrorist incident may be a precursor to many more similiar attacks.

 

[Patroklos]

I never heard of anyone saying that. The FAA almost immediately grounded all aircraft after the first attacks. What else could they have possibly done?

I agree with you though, its a "do anything" reaction regardless of the logic or effectivness of it so that if something else does happen they can at least say they did something.

 

[Formaldehyde]

The FAA didn't order the airspace closed until 9:45, eight minutes after the Pentagon was struck by flight 77 and 59 minutes after flight 11 struck the north tower of the WTC.

http://cleartheskies.com/timeline.html

 

[Patroklos]

That seems like an amazingly short time frame for the FAA to accomplish that task. Credit to them. Grounding all flights nationwide was a last ditch and drastic move, probably not really necessary from an after the fact perspective.

It should be noted that that was not the first action taken BTW, there were warnings circulating the local flight control towers throughouth the NEs and fighter scrambled to hunt down the transponderless 11 before any planes hit anything.

We are conditioned from movies and video games to think the timelines for such things are tremendously abrieviated from their real world instances. If you think about it 59 minutes for a national response by a civilian entity is an amazing reaction time.

 

[warpus]

Is that bin Laden I hear laughing from a distance?

 

[illram]

There comes a point when people just need to accept risk, and realize that there is no such thing as perfect security. These knee jerk rules will accomplish little more than proving that there is a knee that can be jerked.

 

[civ_king]

That seems like an amazingly short time frame for the FAA to accomplish that task. Credit to them. Grounding all flights nationwide was a last ditch and drastic move, probably not really necessary from an after the fact perspective.

It should be noted that that was not the first action taken BTW, there were warnings circulating the local flight control towers throughouth the NEs and fighter scrambled to hunt down the transponderless 11 before any planes hit anything.

We are conditioned from movies and video games to think the timelines for such things are tremendously abrieviated from their real world instances. If you think about it 59 minutes for a national response by a civilian entity is an amazing reaction time.

59 minutes is very fast for a government entity

 

[Mise]

That's less than an hour!

 

[warpus]

There comes a point when people just need to accept risk, and realize that there is no such thing as perfect security. These knee jerk rules will accomplish little more than proving that there is a knee that can be jerked.

That's the only reason they did this, though.

They had a "plan" in place, in case something like this happened, that they could implement right away, to prove to people that they aren't incompetent and are doing something.

 

[woody60707]

News Update: Passengers again free to move around cabin

In-flight security rules have been eased after a two-day clampdown, airline officials familiar with the matter said Monday.

At the captain's discretion, passengers can once again have blankets and other items on their laps or move about the cabin during the tail end of flight. In-flight entertainment restrictions have also been lifted.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34601479/ns/travel-tips/

And I guessed 72hrs.

it is because of the <censored> terrorist attack, security normally takes 20 Minutes to get all the way through it, they are using rules set up by the US for planes to enter the US

I still can't figure out how it took 5hrs, geez. This news report says 3hrs, but that's still crazy.

 

[Evie]

Good to see some of the Crazy is dying down. Although I'm told passengers taking off from Canada must check all luggage now.

Still going to use the train if I can afford the time. Railways often follow river valleys, and are incredibly scenic - I thoroughly loved my ride down from St Alban (Vermont, next to the border) to New Haven along the Connecticut last summer.

 

[civ_king]

Good to see some of the Crazy is dying down. Although I'm told passengers taking off from Canada must check all luggage now.

Still going to use the train if I can afford the time. Railways often follow river valleys, and are incredibly scenic - I thoroughly loved my ride down from St Alban (Vermont, next to the border) to New Haven along the Connecticut last summer.

Same thing at Pearson International (Toronto)