Next month, new regulations from the Transportation Security Administration go into effect, allowing those of you who insist on traveling with such things as Swiss Army knives, hockey sticks, golf clubs, ski poles, lacrosse sticks and baseball bats to take them on an airplane with you. The changes have sparked something of an uproar from flight attendants, who are worried about being exposed to dangerous implements.
Before 9/11, people used to travel with unbelievable amounts
of junk, which made it difficult to find a place to mash your carry-on bag in
the overhead compartments. In spite of all this, I don’t recall there being
regular knife fights or batting practice on airliners, so exactly what the
difference would be now, I don’t know.
Are airline passengers angrier and more aggressive? I could actually understand
that, inasmuch as we will still not be able to take water bottles on board and
will still have to take our shoes off in security. Have all these rules kept us
safe? Have they made us feel safer? Perhaps they did at the beginning; now, I’m
not so sure. The whole experience is demeaning, but we put up with it because
flying gets us there faster, unless it snows, gets foggy, there’s a computer
glitch, an airport security breach or some other issue. As for aggressive
passengers, if they stopped serving alcohol in coach, would that calm folks
down, or make them worse?
A friend of mine is moving to a new state, and has decided
to travel there by RV with her three cats. She figures she can’t take the cats
to most hotels. Inasmuch as she has the time for the trip, she may have the
right idea. Though I wouldn’t relish the idea of traveling and sleeping in a
confined space with three cats (or even one, for that matter), these RVs have
refrigerators, microwaves, beds, toilets, even showers. None of the humiliation
associated with an airport, or even the inconvenience of packing and unpacking
bags and checking into hotels of various cleanliness levels. You don’t even
have to be subject to restaurant food in strange towns not in the Michelin
guide. I just hope I never get stuck behind her vehicle while traveling through
a scenic national park, or I might start behaving like one of these aggressive
airline passengers.
When I traveled to Israel by air many years ago, the
El Al security people were tough. They didn’t rely on all these rote motions
and machines. The trained agents looked you right in the eye and asked you a
bunch of questions, carefully gauging your reactions. If anyone was going to catch
a terrorist, it was going to be them.
Maybe we’d all feel better if the TSA were able to tell us
how many terrorist incidents they’ve actually stopped, thanks to all the pain
involved in boarding an airplane. Oh well, there are lot worse forms of transportation.
Do we have a vote for cruise ships?
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