Its not just the people on the plane that are the problem. Its when the plane gets used as a weapon - ie: its flown into a building and such. The collateral damage is much greater than just the passengers and one planeload of people. It affects more, much more than just the people flying.

With the hardened cockpit doors and alert passengers, that will never happen again. The most a terrorist can try for is to time a bomb right so that a plane will go down in a city. But planes mostly avoid flying over high density downtown areas. So you might end up with a neighborhood like Rockaway getting a crash landing, and a handful of people on the ground dying. It's bad, but no where near as bad as WTC going down.

It had never happened before and hasn't happened since.

Lets hope so.

Unless they're the pilot. Then we'll be sorry we locked those doors!

No, because if it's the pilot you can't stop him from crashing anyway, even with an unlocked door. You might be able to keep him from hitting a particular building, but I doubt he'd announce it beforehand.

This guy has an artificial hip, so he sets off the metal detector every single time he flies... and so he gets the pat-down every single time he flies... which is quite often. So here he strips down to a speedo when going through the metal detector, so he can show once and for all what's going on.

They refuse to let him board, and make him go through security again with his pants on, so they can pat him down.

It's just the utter insanity that gets me on this one. It's come to this: there is a complete lack of logic or common sense involved here. That tells us that the system is ineffective by design. The lowest level employee is not empowered to make the simplest of decisions. As a result, enormous time is wasted on things that are obviously not security threats.

TSA workers are often compared to McDonalds workers. That's unfair. I've worked at McDonalds. Ordinary employees are allowed to make common sense decisions. A simple decision like Hey, cleaning fluid got on the burgers, so we have to throw the burgers out, is made by McDonald's employees all the time. A TSA employee would not be allowed to make that call. So it leads to this.

More correctly, TSA employees should be compared to people who could not get hired as McDonald's employees.

There is a use for people who are incapable of thinking for themselves:
Suicide missions and cannon fodder.

It could be that they are told not to think for themselves, and do what they're told.

Can you imagine how a TSA employee would be cricified if (s)he let someone through, and that someone blew up a plane?

So I'm supposed to feel sorry for them? Fuck that.

Can you accept that there could possibly be an alternate explanation?

An alternate explanation for what? Listen, I'm a firefighter and as much as it sucks I've failed to save a life before. It was over a year ago and I still think about it and can see the woman's face very vividly. Bad shit happens to good people, you do your job as best you can within your limits and hope for the best. If it turns out bad, tough luck deal with it and anyone who blames you for something bad happening when you've followed all the procedures, well they can go to hell.

All the TSA people will quit their jobs then everyone will bitch that they don't want to work and want handouts.

Seriously, it's not the employees' fault. I bet they lose their job if they stray even slightly from the protocol. It seems rather harsh to judge the people who are just doing what they're told to do, saying they must be more stupid than fast food employees.

*knocks on people's heads* I'm not saying it's not a stupid stupid stupid policy, but the employees have no say in the matter, I'm sure.

"You do your job as best you can within your limits." What limits do you suppose the TSA puts on its employees? Do you think they would love to use common sense?

I was speaking of limits in general. They only way TSA can be 100% effective in stopping threats is to not let anyone in. That isn't an option, so being an employee there you have to realize and accept that the measures will not stop everything. And when the day comes that someone does get through and the shit hits the fan, know that blame cannot be placed on you for following procedures. I'm sure many would love to use common sense, just as many also love power-tripping in their position. It is a mixed bag, they aren't all helpless pawns just doing their jobs, and they aren't all egotistical megalomaniacs.

And that's just what I'm saying. Those people probably were following procedures, and thinking "awwww fuck this sucks but I need this job." They're probably REALLY tired of the shit they get all day long, but they need the job. So they follow the stupid procedures that don't make sense even to them.

Otherwise, their ass in on the line. They don't get to pick and choose. It is, I'm sure, a very set protocol. I bet their procedures dont' allow for individual expression. I think this is where people are getting way off track.

In other words, everyone is raping the messenger. The messenger just doesn't want to be unemployed in this economy.

*shrug*