Knives on the Plane

New Yorkers often stand as a national litmus test of just how tough Americans can be in a crisis. The weeks and months after 9/11 showed us that even they have their limits although most found a place somewhere to bury those ugly days.

In just a few seconds Monday, however, thousands were brought face-to-face with the reality of another large jet again circling Manhattan when the Air Force flew a 747 down low near the island. With an F16 in tow, you couldn’t blame anyone whose brain was instantly transported back September 11th.

Apparently all sorts of government agencies knew about the flight. They all just somehow forgot to share that information with the rest of us. The Air Force and the White House seem to have taken the brunt of the finger pointing.

Lost in the conversation however, was any mention of where the Department of Homeland Security’s multi-billion dollar Transportation Security Administration was during the planning of the flight. What were they thinking? Or perhaps more importantly, were they thinking about the millions of citizens around New York at all. It’s TSA’s job to make us safe, right. At the magic 100 day point in the new administration, the TSA is still without an administrator, just like the FAA.

Lord knows that as a business aviation user and advocate, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is not high on my list of folks to be cooped up with for very long. The agency’s most recent attacks on our industry, the Large Aircraft Security Proposal (LASP), for instance, would demand that all forms of aviation security look like that of the airlines even though the two business models are completely different. At least one senior official in Senator Durbin’s office told me he thinks the 7000 + comments received about LASP probably stunned the leaderless TSA, at least for the time being. But there is much more to aviation security than beating up on business aviation, at least I hope so.

TSA Public Relations Games

Tens of billions of tax dollars have been spent keeping the American flying public safe, or at least making the American public think they are safer than they were on 9/11.

Just take a look at the junk – even weapons – the TSA folks confiscate from airline passengers in a given week and we’d all agree that some good has been done since 2002. Then again, they also grab tons of really dangerous items, like water bottles, tubes of Crest and all sorts of hair gel, simply because the tubes are larger than three ounces. Someone tried to build a bomb on an airplane using big bottles of liquid and gel so TSA figured little bottles were OK. I can’t imagine what will happen when someone gets caught with potentially lethal underwear some day. This TSA thinking, or the lack of it, at frightens me and apparently quite a few other people.

Last month, the Government Accountability Office (oh I do like these guys sometimes) released a report that seriously questioned whether anyone with their head screwed on straight was still working at the TSA, at least when it comes to assessing real transportation risks (refer to the LASP paragraph above for more information). With all the hubbub about Mr. Obama’s first performance review pending, it didn’t see much press.

The GAO acknowledged what we all know, that TSA can’t protect every transportation asset all the time. They need a solid risk mitigation system to identify and prioritize the actions the agency takes tied together with regular evaluation to make sure the situations haven’t changed.

Knives on the Plane

Imagine my surprise when aboard an American Airlines Triple 7 a few weeks back when I was offered a metal knife and fork to eat my din din, not 10 feet from the secure cockpit door we’re always told not to congregate near lest we be thought to be bad guys. Until this flight, I thought everyone had been pretty much cleaned out of their weapons before they entered the cabin. Here they were giving them back.

I spoke to a couple of the flight attendants who were pretty angry about this change to the TSA guidelines. There was no fanfare about the rearming of passengers either, no news releases. “The stuff just showed back up one day when I came to work,” one attendant told me.

What happened to TSA’s risk assessment process that made them decide that 7 1/2 year after 9/11, metal knives on board were no longer a risk, but Crest is? The three-ounce rules exists to make people feel safe, not because it is safe. TSA also allows four-inch pointy metal scissors in carry on bags. Box cutters are bad, but four-inch blades are OK?TSA has also decided a seven-inch screwdriver is OK too? Feeling safer now folks?

Talk to flight attendants and they’ll tell you they don’t like the blades, the knives and the tubes, but they’ll also connect the dots in a way TSA hasn’t. Flight attendants think that the tubes are silly because ten people with ten tubes each can meet up on an airplane and still concoct something terrible if they want to.

IMs on the Plane

I told one flight attendant I couldn’t tell what made me more angry, that some numbskull at TSA had arbitrarily decided knives and sharp scissors were OK and Crest wasn’t or that most of us probably didn’t know they decided to change the policy.

Then this nice lady told me what really scared her on the airplane … wireless Internet access. Her reasoning was simple. With wireless, people on-board the aircraft can easily IM each other and coordinate almost any action they want, like bringing all the tubes together in one part of the cabin, or “grabbing the flight attendant in First Class when she comes around the corner.” When I thought about wireless, I only thought about catching up on my e-mail.

The first time I said the TSA operated as if it were on autopilot a few months back, the remark was meant to be tongue in cheek. Now I think I had it right. Why did the GAO never suggest that TSA talk to the people actually operating the airplanes to gather data before they made any of these silly decisions. How different might flying be today if they did?

TSA will have an administrator one of these days I’m sure. I doubt that will make us feel any safer.