Friday fun: Mary Worth dreads the TSA, too!

One of the blogs I read for fun is the Comics Curmudgeon, whose author, Josh Fruhlinger, has a love/hate relationship with the daily funnies (or not-so-funnies). Today, Mary Worth — a comic I shunned as boring in my childhood, only later to realize that it is boring for adults, too — takes on airport security [...]

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Aviation08: The Obama aviation plan

Welcome, new readers! For more blogging on aviation politics, click here.

First of all, big props to Obama and his campaign team for actually having a transportation agenda [PDF]. The McCain campaign devotes a whole section to manned space exploration but can’t spare a word for aviation. So, to Obama, an A for effort.
Now let’s dig [...]

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Security compromised

Stories like this — “A laptop containing the unencrypted security data for 33,000 travelers using the Clear system was stolen at San Francisco International Airport on July 26, according to CBS5 Television” — are pretty depressing. TSA is ineffective, and the contractors hired to make up for problems caused by TSA — that is, Clear [...]

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TSA in spat with Europe over passenger data?

The Guardian reports that the U.S. government is circulating a memo and beginning negotiations in Europe to intensify security measures:

Airlines would be required to give passengers’ personal data to the Transportation Security Administration even for flights merely overflying the United States.
Travelers from countries in Europe for which the United States waives visas would be required [...]

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Irwin Stelzer’s misguided airline economics

Irwin Stelzer, a very intelligent commentator on economic issues, indulges too much air rage in his latest column. After running through a laundry list of typical air travel complaints, he reveals that his understanding of air traffic control funding, for example, is shaky:
Now consider the world’s airlines’ roles in all of this. They have by [...]

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Another nail in TSA’s coffin

TSA screeners had failure rates of up to 75 percent in finding bomb components, according to a classified report leaked to USA Today. “Screeners at Los Angeles International Airport missed about 75% of simulated explosives and bomb parts that Transportation Security Administration testers hid under their clothes or in carry-on bags at checkpoints, the TSA [...]

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“Hole in the airport fence? Nyet problem.”

After a fifteen-year-old Russian boy survived a two-hour flight at high altitude as a stowaway inside the wheel well of a Boeing 737, his story received some attention. He stowed away at the Perm Airport by sneaking through a hole in the airport fence. Everyone wondered how a modern airport could allow such a major [...]

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Travel-size holy water

Airport security restrictions apparently apply to vials of holy water received from Roman Catholic pilgrimage sites, the AP reports. Several pilgrims returning to Rome from Our Lady of Lourdes in France had their holy water confiscated if it was in bottles that exceeded EU airline safety limits. The travelers were flying on the just-launched, Vatican-backed, [...]

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[Grunt] “Welcome to America, stand in line.”

At his excellent travel blog, Mark Ashley answers a question about the best way to connect to flights to Europe. His suggestions are good: avoid Heathrow, make no connections after arriving on an overnight flight, and avoid making connections in the United States on the return trip. This, he says, is because of more stringent [...]

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Airline security . . . looking good

From Aero-News.Net:
The Transportation Security Administration thinks it has found the answer to some of the agency’s biggest problems . . . including its failure to retain personnel, persistent equipment troubles, missing hard drives containing personal data, and security breaches.
Why, new uniforms, of course.
Make sure those deck chairs are arranged neatly, folks. . . .

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