Arthur Frommer Online

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Posts tagged as TSA

Opposition Seems to be Building to the TSA's Proposed Relaxation of Its Security Rules to Permit Pocket Knives to be Carried Aboard Airplanes

Posted by Arthur Frommer at 3/28/2013 2:00 PM EDT

Both the union of flight attendants, and the union of federal air marshals, seem to be waging a powerful campaign against the TSA's proposed weakening of its security regulations to permit pocket knives to be carried aboard airplanes. It was recently pointed out by the president of the flight attendants' union that the September 11 hijackers took control of aircraft with box cutters having blades smaller than the pocket knives that the T.S.A. would now permit. Whether or not those pocket knives could now enable future hijackers to break through the doors of the airplanes' cockits, they could apparently cause severe injury to the attendants and passengers against whom they are used.

I find that argument compelling, and am puzzled as to why the TSA has proposed such revisions to its regulations. The claim that the new rules would bring us into sync with European regulations seems unconvincing; the Europeans' record of aviation safety--the ease with which they allowed the "shoe-bomber" and the "underwear bomber" onto planes--does not inspire confidence.

I plan to mail my own opposition to the new rules to the TSA, and feel that readers of this blog might want their own views to be known.

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To the Dismay of Flight Attendants, the TSA Reduces List of Weapons Prohibited on Planes

Posted by Arthur Frommer at 3/6/2013 10:00 AM EST

The big news in travel is the announcement by the TSA that starting on April 25, they will permit air passengers to carry on board their flights a whole array of potentially-damaging devices that used to be prohibited. Prominent among them are pocket knives less than 2.5" long and half an inch wide. Though all of us know that such knives can fatally hurt a human being, they will now be permitted in carry-on luggage, which means they can be accessed by their owners in the course of the flight.

In the same gesture, the TSA announced last week that sporting equipment of the pole or bat variety can now be carried on board. You can bring with you a golf club, a children's-size bat, ski poles -- even though these items can be brandished or swung overhead to knock out a flight attendant or another passenger.

What's particularly disturbing to me is the allowance of pocket knives. It is widely suspected, and partially confirmed by the luggage the hijackers left behind them, that the terrorists who brought down planes on September 11 were not equipped with box cutters, as was widely assumed, but with pocket knives. Such knives, drawn across the neck of a person, can kill them just as effectively as a box cutter. Various union officials representing flight attendants have bitterly complained about the TSA's new liberal policies and asked that they be reversed.

I'm with them. Despite all the seeming safeguards -- locked doors to the cockpits of all planes, federal marshals flying aboard surreptitiously -- there is now a greatly enhanced opportunity for either crazed people or terrorists to create mayhem aboard a flight. I can't for the life of me guess what caused the TSA to take a step that no one at all was really advocating, but simply assume that the constant, unreasoned criticism of that federal agency has made its officials eager to be liked. No one can constantly listen to the carping and criticism of our airport safety agents without wanting to take a step that will mollify the attackers. Too bad that the rest of us must now fly with less assurance that the terrorists, or the lunatics, will be thwarted.

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Arthur's Blog: Tips for Winter Cruisers and Christmas Fliers

Posted by Arthur Frommer at 11/19/2012 9:00 AM EST

We are about to enjoy the popular season of winter cruises in the tropics. The cost of that, which came down in recent months because of the public's unhappy reaction to the Concordia disaster, will rise again, and most commentators are expecting at least a 10% increase.

But more important than the basic price for such cruises is the increasing tendency of cruiselines to nickle-and-dime their passengers with unexpected fees and charges. For the first time in cruise history, such big cruiselines as Royal Caribbean and Celebrity are charging extra amounts for quality dishes ordered in the main dining room of their ships -- for steaks ($14.99), for lobster ($20), or for surf-and-turf ($27.50). What's more, there's an extra "gratuity" charge for steaks ordered in the main dining room, and therefore an incentive for waiters to persuade you to order them. What used to be a haven far removed from the world of extra charges -- namely, the main dining room of a cruiseship -- is no longer free from commercial greed. Extra charges abound. Hamburger, anyone?

And beware the lure of those special, new, outdoor restaurants on the top deck of ships, where meals incur another surprising extra charge. What used to be a single charge for the entire cruise is now a medley of many multiple charges which increase your final bill. More and more, it appears that all-inclusive resort hotels in Mexico and the Caribbean, which charge nothing extra for your drinks or for their specialty restaurants, are now generally cheaper than the average cruise. On a cruise, watch yourself!

There's also special advice for air passengers seeking to enjoy a Christmas vacation this year. By the time you read this blog, it may be too late to obtain seats for Christmas-period flights. But if you're one of the lucky ones with confirmed space for that ultra-heavy period of travel, you'll want to arrive at the airport much earlier than you ordinarily would. Many passengers at Christmas time are inexperienced travelers unaware of the tactics needed to pass quickly through security gates. They don't wear slip-on shoes that can be quickly doffed, they carry all sorts of elaborately-wrapped Christmas gifts that have to be painfully unwrapped for TSA officials; they aren't aware that they have to take out their metallic change and take off their wrist watches or jewelry, and for a dozen other reasons, they hold up the lines of people waiting to reach the departure areas. It will take you much more time to pass through security.

If you don't already have tickets for travel in 2013, you'd be well advised to wait until January to buy them; the airlines aren't presently discounting flights several months in the future. But this advice doesn't apply to spring break travel; so great will be the demand for those dates that you'd be well advised to purchase your seats now, regardless of their price. They won't come down any further.

Returning to holiday travel: It will be difficult this year. Airline capacity has been sharply cut, but the number of would-be passengers has greatly increased with the improvement in consumer confidence. So be super-cautious: go early to the airport, and expect the worst.

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Arthur's Blog: TSA Confiscates 47 Guns in One Week from Air Passengers During Screenings; Incidences on the Rise

Posted by Arthur Frommer at 10/3/2012 1:00 PM EDT

A news item which failed last week to get the attention it deserved, reports that in the seven-day period ending September 20, TSA agents around the country discovered and confiscated no fewer than 47 guns that air passengers had packed into their carry-on luggage. Thirty-eight of those guns were fully-loaded, and could have been retrieved from overhead racks to create havoc in a passenger flight, or the storming of a cockpit, or the puncturing of the plane's fuselage. Thankfully, alert TSA agents spotted those weapons (and others) either when alarms were set off or they were discovered during routine pat-downs.

In the year to date, the TSA reports a total of 1,100 guns have been found in carry-on luggage that people have attempted to bring aboard passenger airplanes. An increase in American laws allowing for the "conceal-carry" of handguns has led to the sharp increase in the number of persons attempting to carry loaded weapons aboard airplanes. This has been permitted by a 5-to-4 vote of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The persons whose carry-ons were found to have such weapons have all responded, some of them tearfully, that they simply forgot that they had packed the guns into their carry-ons -- that they were innocent of any ill intentions.

But so what? It is only the stern conduct of our TSA agents that prevented them from doing so, and can also prevent actual terrorists from bringing weapons onto an airplane. The nature of our security procedures has changed dramatically since the days prior to September 11 when airport security was in the hands of local, private, profit-seeking entrepreneurs paying minimum wage to those who staffed the security belts. It was those people who allowed 19 hi-jackers to board four planes with box cutters, and then fly those seized aircraft into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania.

I hope that readers will keep this recent concealed-guns-at-airports phenomenon in mind when they read the various dramatic columns and articles attacking the members of the TSA. Those are the articles, you'll remember, which claim that TSA agents actually enjoy patting-down the people who have set off security alarms. In contrast to the rest of us, who have almost always found TSA agents to be acting properly when they administer a pat-down, the alarmists claim that a huge percentage of the TSA are a species of criminals. This is an accusation that none of them can support.

We should be grateful to have a serious, dedicated TSA working hard to prevent terrorists from taking weapons onto a passenger airplane and seizing control of it.

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