Random-Schmandom
The most daunting part of flying commercially these days is the thought of dealing with the airport and the airlines' security people. The first stage, the metal detectors, is aggravating enough. The Lovely Linda and I have already given up our two-inch pocket knives, the kind we use to cut up apples in motel rooms. We've had to take off our belts and shoes, and have been wanded a coupla times.
I can kinda understand how some perve would get his jollies passing the metal detector around my cute wife, but I gotta think that the only reason for wanding me is because I likely look easily annoy-able. And really, why would anyone take such a job except to irritate people? They probably didn't past the test for meter maid, who, it is said, eat their young.
But the real curiosity is when you get to the gate and are "randomly" selected for yet another inspection. This is the work of the airlines, who are losing money hand over fist, and haven't figured out that the more they aggravate their customers the less likely they are to fly. What really doesn't make sense is when they recheck people who came in on other flights, on the same airline, and never left the terminal. Where do they think these passengers suddenly acquired weapons?
Okay, there was that case last summer of a woman who was discovered with a gun she says she had accidentally packed -- don't we all? -- and she'd come in on another plane. Yes, it underscores the lapses in security, and maybe we should all travel naked. And naked women would seriously upset any traveling Muslims, but let's be logical. Even if the woman they caught with the gun had been planning some kind of incident, she couldn't have been counting the them to miss the gun the first time so that she could have made it to her second flight armed.
At Southwest the other day, the ticket dispenser put a line of Xs on some of the boarding passes, supposedly randomly, and those folks and their carry on bags were thoroughly searched anew. One of the hapless victims was an enceinte bovine creature who must have been the last breathing female in a cowboy bar six months earlier. Well yeah, it's possible that she was wearing some kind of prosthesis packed with C4 and was planning to terminate her pregnancy in a spectacular way, but she should have been caught at the first security check, right?.
Random-schmandom, the fact is that we're all being punished because authorities haven't figured out how to nail the bad guys. Plus, they have too much authority. Shortly after two American West pilots were pulled off a flight for drinking, a passenger on another flight asked if the pilots on his plane had been given a sobriety test. They tossed the passenger off the plane because they didn't like his sense of humor.
The airlines have been dinosaurs since before there were pterodactyls. Their fare systems is so nutsy they don't understand it themselves, and their stand-by policies make less sense than a penny. So it's no wonder they'd screw up security. It's just too bad if you're trying to get somewhere quickly and comfortably. And it's too bad for them because the number of people flying distances of less than 400 miles has declined down more than 20% this year.
And that's SetonnoteS...I'm Tony Seton.
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