The burning question: " Is Logan Airport safe?
" has become a political issue in the
gubernatorial race, as well as a leading topic of
conversation. Based on three trips I took — one in
October, one in December and one in January — the
answer to the burning question appears to be, " It
looks safer, but isn’t really much safer. "
The first change one notices is the uniformed
military police. At Logan, they carry pistols and
nightsticks, but at Dallas and Washington they
carry rifles. The young soldiers wear standard
jungle-patterned camouflage, which doesn’t
camouflage them very well at all against the
marble and mirrors of the Logan terminals. The
reason for camouflage in battle is to avoid being
seen; but here the purpose is to be seen — and
they succeed at having an ubiquitous presence.
Their official function is to check
identifications, but their real purpose is to
provide reassurance.
Regular security personnel still perform the
bag-checking duties. Although the number of
security staff hasn’t increased much, their level
of activity has. My identification was checked at
least four times before boarding on every trip.
Laptop computers are now routinely X-rayed
separately, and you’ve got a good chance of an
individual bag inspection. This is the main source
of longer check-in times — there are more
individual inspections. This activity, while also
largely symbolic, does prevent ostensibly
dangerous objects from being brought on board.
The list of dangerous objects varies widely. On
my January trip, a woman had her metal nail file
confiscated after she confessed its presence. On
my October trip, I observed a bin full of scissors
and small knives and other sharp objects located
by X-ray. I never saw any nail clippers
confiscated, and I brought one along undetected on
my December trip, so I’d say the widespread story
of nail clipper confiscations are an urban legend.
Once past the security gate, Logan allows
knives at the restaurants — as does Tampa airport,
but Dallas and New Orleans airports do not. This
made dinner in a barbecue restaurant difficult —
the server had to pre-cut all of the meat into
small pieces. And I wondered if the server
himself, wielding a large blade in his daily
duties beyond the security gate, required some
sort of special security status. While this is the
most direct response to the Sept. 11 methods,
banning plastic cutlery seems more inconvenient
than safety-minded.
My December trip was just a few days after the
" shoe bomber " incident, and my shoes were
X-rayed on that trip — all passengers walked
through the metal detector unshod. By my January
trip, X-raying shoes had been replaced by a manual
inspection — a fellow wearing latex gloves stuck
his hand into each shoe to ensure that they had no
false toes, or who-knows-what. Certainly this will
prevent shoe bomber copycats — but preventing the
previous attack isn’t as useful as predicting the
next attack.
On six flights, I got individually scanned for
metal three times. The sensors are set much more
sensitively nowadays — they find every bit of
aluminum foil on leftover gum wrappers in every
pocket I’ve got. My belt buckles are now regularly
inspected, rotated, handled and only then cleared
for boarding. This is a time-consuming process,
and is the basis of complaints of " profiling " —
my girlfriend’s belt buckles escape such scrutiny.
My girlfriend was required, however, to drink a
sample of her juice while passing through security
— evidently the security guard suspected a
possibility of poisoning the pilot, or something.
Or maybe it was just the dark green spirulina
color that aroused suspicion — the rule seems to
be that they’ll inspect anything that the rest of
the passengers might worry about, if it went
through uninspected.
The most inscrutable new security activity was,
when approaching for landing at Logan on one
flight, that passengers were required to open our
window shades. I asked for details, and the flight
attendant explained that the tower could thereby
more readily see any fire aboard the plane, and
that this was a regulation prior to Sept. 11, but
never enforced. I’m still scratching my head on
that one.
Some other recent changes:
· Electronic ticketing was banned in October,
but has since returned.
· Parking at Terminal B was banned through
December, but is now again available, with a
visual inspection of the trunk of your car.
· A two-hour check-in time was required in
October but is now falling back toward 30 minutes
— I caught an earlier flight than ticketed in both
directions in January.
· The Ted Williams Tunnel is now sometimes open
to passenger cars, and is a great shortcut.
· The " CT " bus now runs from Andrew Station
(one stop south of South Station on the Red Line)
directly to the airport, and is an even better
shortcut.
I conclude that most new security procedures do
more to assuage public fear of air travel than
actually make air travel more secure against
terrorists. But I also conclude that that’s not a
bad idea. The purpose of my last flight, to
Washington, was to discuss a newly forming
national water infrastructure security system. One
of the topics we discussed was " psychological
attack " — that terrorists could shut down a water
system by simply getting food color into tapwater.
Red-colored water wouldn’t poison anyone, but it
would destroy people’s confidence in the public
water supply, which can shut down a water system
as effectively as if people were actually
poisoned.
Our air transportation infrastructure suffered
a similar loss of confidence. People need the
reassurance that camouflaged soldiers at check-in
provide. It doesn’t matter if their rifles are
unloaded — which my visual inspection always
indicated was the case — because they’re not there
to stop terrorists, but to rebuild public
confidence.
We’ve spent many millions of dollars providing
ourselves with reassurance, and air travel is
returning to normal. Now it’s time to shift
resources from rebuilding confidence to improving
safety.
— Jesse Gordon has frequent flyer miles with
most U.S.-based airlines as well as a few with
Singapore Air. He is currently deciding what to do
with a $300 voucher from being " bumped " on his
December flight.
