Do You Feel Safer At Airports?
On January 15, the “Hangar Talk” thread of AVSIG, the online aviation forum, included a link to the New York Times. The story on that link was hard to believe.
Seems the writer, one Kathryn Harrison, and her two daughters recently arrived at EWR (Newark) on a Continental flight from Puerto Rico. When they arrived at baggage claim, Ms. Harrison realized her wallet was missing. Leaving her two daughters, she spent 30 minutes getting permission to return to her arrival gate. What happened there is horrifying.
Ms. Harrison found that her airplane was still at the gate, but nobody was there to help her. She pounded on the jetway door, but to no avail. In frustration, she turned the door handle and, to her amazement (and mine), the door opened. An alarm went off but, as she put it, none of the “rumpled middle-aged men” in the area paid the least bit of attention. Nobody came to arrest her, so she propped the door open with her shoe (leaving alarm screaming) and ran down the jetway to her airplane.
The airplane door was open, but nobody answered her hails. She got on board, searched her seat and surrounding area without success, then went back to the gate where the alarm still blared and middle-aged men still read newspapers. Nobody seemed interested, so she removed her shoe and left.
She reported her loss to Continental and told them exactly what she had done. She was treated with astonishment rather than kindliness, but she wasn’t detained, either.
All I can say is good goshamighty.
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We have to ensure that our things must be in proper places when we’re having a travel so that it will not get lost easily..
Llorgan–
Right. An earlier comment made that point, and I had to agree. Y’all were right and I was wrong.
Thanks,
Ralph Hood
So the point of the story is…
once Ms Harrison got past the checkpoint, she left TSA jurisdiction behind and she was on her own.
The concourse is not much different from the steet at that point: police are rarely there when you really need them.
Airline cutbacks mean that gate agents will be busy doing other stuff (probably at the next gate handling another arrival or setting up for departure) when the plane empties. The only people accessing the aircraft at that point would be the cleaners (whose background checks may be questionable at best).
If you were one of those “rumpled-middle-aged men”, would you have tried to stop her? I doubt it.
The days of Airlines treating passengers as special are long gone — it’s a cattle-car business now.
Hi, Al–
Right you are, but I suppose there will be more airline pax than genav pilots for the foreseeable future. Airports must deal with problems like the above.
Thanks for writing,
Ralph Hood
When a Business Person obtains a Private License and an Instrument Rating; they have the ability to Grow in knowledge: Safety of General Aviation Flight.
In addition, as I found, My utilization of time improved tenfold as a Manufactuing Manager.
I found that I could do in a week what it would take two or more weeks to accomplish using the airlines.
9,000 hrs in Single Engine and Light Twin over 12 yrs and no emergencies.
Al Beckwith
info@BeckwithEnterprises.com
Matt–
Oops–diferent Matt.
I’ll be in Vegas myself (briefly) next week. One of those in-today-out-tomorrow trips.
BTW, I changed the title of the blog because of your prior comment.
Thanks again,
Ralph Hood
Or rather, no Sir, I’m from Las Vegas.
No Sir, Las Vegas.
Matt–
By golly, you do have a point. I stand corrected. I guess it is the locals at fault. I have heard alarms go off in several airports, and nobody paid the least bit of attention.
BTW, are you my friend Matt, from Huntsville?
Thanks,
Ralph Hood
How is this the TSA’s fault. They run the checkpoint. The check point, not the concourse, thats local law enforcements job and the airports. TSA has enough issue and problems thats for damn sure, but this one isn’t their fault.