Obviously that's not a "normal" thing to have done, but in a world with lighter security, I remember airport food being around the same level as mall food court options, so it was an interesting option for getting out of the house. I'd be curious if there's some lower-security path towards making Airports more of a common space, not that there's any chance of it happening.
It does have a massive mall attached to the public area though (Jewel).
https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/34818/why-is-secu...
It is helpful in the sense that bottlenecks don't happen earlier on, but I'm not sure it's that great of an approach.
It's the transition of power that's the problem. Like, a real bad problem. Like raze half your country and set you back 50-100 years problem.
Roman dictators weren't like modern autocrats. They were officials, appointed for a limited time (usually no more than 6 months) to address some specific emergency. They weren't crooks who staged coups. And it doesn't seem to have been a desirable appointment to hold; dictators often stood down before the time-limit.
I think the GP's point was that even with "good" dictators, the problems come up when succession needs to happen, which is why "dictatorships" don't scale.
Democracy has a built-in mechanism to stop any bad thing from happening in a change of government, while ensuring that change happens often (at least in a good one).
A ruler with absolute political power.
> ...modern version, of which there are many terrible examples before power transition becomes an issue?
This actually reinforces my point. I never denied the existence of bad dictators (or even that the majority of dictators are bad, I think that's quite likely). This would make the power transition for a country that happened to get a good one significantly more dangerous.
That, and the lack of freedom, and the life you're subjected to when the dictator doesn't like you.
I ran through the airport to security, let them know what flight I was on, and then ran to the gate after walking through the metal detector fully clothed and sending my bag through x-ray. Security radioed the gate and the flight crew left the door open so I could board. I made it, took my seat and buckled in, they closed the door and the plane pushed back. Elapsed time car seat to plane seat was about 7 minutes. Every single person I interacted with was helpful and understanding.
What strikes me today is that EVERY SINGLE THING ABOUT FLYING SUCKS. Airports are just part of the problem.
I know this sounds extreme but they need to deregulate and privatize every single thing about the airline industry.
Government just needs to ensure that liability flows in part to executives and board members regardless of corporate structure.
Airlines can form a consortium to operate ATC themselves and can modernize it; something the government is completely failing at.
A modern ATC would let us break away from the hub model that gives airports so much power.
And your sandwich will be cheaper at an airport closer to your destination where you didn’t have to wait an hour for security to feel you up and take naked pictures of you.
Specifically in Germany the experience seems to have only gotten worse (both with quality of service and punctuality).
Try that with a state sponsored security force.
Since the TSA is generally a federally controlled agency, you'd have to elect a majority of the House/Senate/Executive to change policy there to make it better, and literally no one will run for those offices with even a minor part of their platform being improving the TSA. Even if they had a position you liked about airport security, would you be willing to look past a difference on something like gun laws or school funding or environmental issues to vote for someone who was going to make the TSA more effective? If your answer is no, that's why people have no real hope that the government would improve the TSA.
So any government should work on improving the process if enough people are complaining and there are objective improvements to be made.
We don't have to think about which party to vote for to ensure eg. the government cares about improving lives of their citizens: they should all do that!
Do you consider "fundamental to the system" better? I don't.
However there is huge career risk to reducing regulation, easing up on "safety" rules, etc. And anyone who does that will be attacked and if possible punished if anything goes wrong.
Literally there is no incentive for bureaucracies to do better.
The following airports utilize the screening partner program: Atlantic City International Airport, Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport, Charles M. Schulz–Sonoma County Airport, Dawson Community Airport, Great Falls International Airport, Glacier Park International Airport, Greater Rochester International Airport, Havre City-County Airport, Jackson Hole Airport, Kansas City International Airport, L. M. Clayton Airport, Orlando Sanford International Airport, Portsmouth International Airport, Punta Gorda Airport, Roswell International Air Center, San Francisco International Airport, Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport, Sidney-Richland Municipal Airport, Sioux Falls Regional Airport, Tupelo Regional Airport, Wokal Field/Glasgow International Airport, Yellowstone Airport
If privatisation means opening up a line of business to all comers, it's good. When it means a limited number of suppliers chosen by an authority, it's almost always worse.
Absolutely. So let's have competition with multiple private contractors at every airport, paid by the number of passengers who choose to use a particular contractor to go through security.
That would solve every problem, as the market will optimize for maximum passenger satisfaction at security checkpoints, especially if they can get more people through faster.
What could go wrong? /s
If there is no competition possible--and there are so many other situations apart from airport security--then a publicly owned provider is better. There _are_ some things that are a natural monopoly but if there must be a monopoly then it should be a government one.
A private monopoly is the worst of all worlds.
Very quickly “no security airlines” would go out of business as no one would want to risk their life needlessly, especially if the lack of security led to an incident.
However an airline that used nonintrusive, convenient methods for security, fmight find a loyal passenger following.
I don't think so, as you seem to have misunderstood my "bright idea."
It's not airlines I was talking about. They'd have nothing to do with it. Just as they have zero to do with security checkpoint screening now. Rather, it's multiple, private replacements for TSA, each of which would serve all the airlines/gates at an airport.
What's more, even before the TSA existed, the airlines didn't do the screening. It was a private security contractor hired by the airport.
It's, as you correctly imply, all about incentives.
In my "scenario" these hypothetical "competitive private replacement" security screeners are paid by the numbers of bodies it passes through.
And so I'll ask my sarcastic question again. This time specifically to you:
What could possibly go wrong?
Edit: Clarified prose.
Privatization works only because of market incentives. When you take away some of those incentives then you have the illusion of a free market but free market controls cannot encourage good outcomes.
Not always. Often when this happens, it's just a race to the bottom.
TSA precheck in ATL takes min 5 minutes on a good day.
Setting that aside again, airlines have now even taken the liberty of telling you “boarding doors close 5 minutes before departure and won’t be reopened”.
Travel today is so shitty you can’t even fathom what it could be.
Err... 5 minutes is extremely generous. Emirates closes the gates 15 mins prior to departure; AirAsia, Qatar Airways, 20 mins; EasyJet 25 mins.
So, yes, everything sucks more now, but it's also far more affordable, and part of how it became more affordable was that the mid to late 90s brought the first wave of budget airlines like Airtran that lowered service and legroom and the like but made it cheaper.
There's a common refrain about a lot of things - air travel and the internet most of all, that amount to "this thing was better when it was a luxury service for only the rich."
And yet people keep flying. As long as the price is low enough there are enough customers who will endure the pain.
Things will change when more people stop flying.
At some point, trying to go from NYC to DC, let alone St. Louis or Atlanta, takes a pretty long time via non-plane methods. In some ways, the big innovation of plane travel is that for major cities, non-stop flights are an option, so it's hard to beat the speed of it. There's never going to be a viable non-stop train from, say, Miami to DC, but if it stops in Jacksonville, Atlanta, Greenville, Winston-Salem, and Richmond, then you've added hours to the trip time in stops/slowing down, which loses people as well who don't want to spend the whole day on a train.
There's a breakpoint around 4-5 hours where travel doesn't eat your full day, and there's only so many routes where you could get under that duration and still have enough volume of people to take it to make it worth running the route.
Except the eventual 1000 km / hour part
The massive deregulation that already happened is a very large part of why flying sucks. It's also a very large part of why it's cheap. You makes your choice and picks your poison.
And then I got me a ringside view for my quaint little fetish
I just wanna drain my little pink heart of all its malice
And kick back for the afternoon in this fluorescent palace
I was honestly expecting exactly that kind of follow up attack for years.
Also it was relatively frequent but not that serious in the late 1960’s. The first US fatality from aircraft high jacking didn’t occur until 1970.
Attacking airports has also happened multiple times including a 2002 incident in LA and even quite deadly attacks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lod_Airport_massacre
As opposed to killing hundreds.
I'm not saying that the current TSA theater is the most efficient way to stop hijackings.
Don't be ridiculous. At every airport and terminal??
And then how many extra people standing around doing nothing when it is a quiet period??
While that's a pretty extreme statement, airport security's usefulness is definitely in question. Most other airports outside the US are significantly less strict (don't have to take off shoes, for instance), and there have been tons of youtube videos showing how you could easily slip in weapons of various sorts through airport security.
It's practically a meme about the fact that they throw out all "might-be-bomb" liquids into trashcans right next to you -- in the same receptacle.
It seems much more like security theatre, and maybe thanks to terrorist groups, but more thanks to sensationalist media + clever people who take advantage of the capitalistic system (one of the heads of the TSA just-so-happens to make the machines they use to scan your luggage, "private" business on the side that he gets paid for.)
In addition, TSA Precheck / Clear / Global Entry are all ways to pay to have less inconvenience -- but have you seen any statistics they've been able to give out about stopped terrorist attempts? Don't you think that would be a thing that would be promoted if it was happening?
In the US, even if there _is_ a tedious process, at least everything feels efficient, and appear quite standardized.
What does this actually mean?
I really feel for the TSA “agent” who has to just sit and make sure nobody goes the wrong way through the “exit only” corridor that leads out of the terminal.
Once precheck became a thing, time to go through security is almost always less than 5m.
An airplane flight is practically a high-tech bus trip. Airport security probably is useless, otherwise there'd be an analogue for public transport. And as people regularly point out, the cost-benefit of airport security is probably net-negative. I bet almost nobody would choose a high-security airport over a low security airport if they had a choice.
I have been routinely searched before boarding a ferry to Spain as a foot passenger. AFAIAA, car passengers are not routinely searched, so I don't know what the logic is there?
Even if the plane just downed itself in an ocean in an emergency; that'd be technically not so hard to pull off. Enough to deter hijackers so the mechanism wouldn't need to be used.
I think that mindset is mistaken, and explains many of the misconceptions around the dentist that was dragged of a United plane a while ago. However, that this mindset can persist shows just how amazingly successful aviation safety and security efforts have been over the past decades.
> Airport security probably is useless, otherwise there'd be an analogue for public transport.
It is much easier to kill everyone on a plane (and then some) than everyone on a bus or train, it seems to me.
Not to mention that TSA over and over again fails their undercover inspections. In some cases 95% of weapons and explosives make it through TSA without any issues! Airport security literally is theater. At best it'll result in the terrorist attack being moved from the airplane to the security queue.
This has already happened; most terrorist attacks these days occur at malls and schoolhouses.
Same memetic infection to disrupt and destroy, same domestic hysterics, same feedback cycle. So it goes until the next big meme shift for the dissatisfied comes along.
>Not to mention that TSA over and over again fails their undercover inspections.
Every (mid-2000s) attacker that managed to get through the incompetent security was defeated by the best security force available: passengers that know that allowing their plane to be hijacked or threatened by a bomb means certain death for everyone on board should they stay in their seats and permit it.
There have been a few cases where the pilot waited for the co-pilot to use the restroom, locked them out of the cockpit with the post-9/11 door, then intentionally crashed the plane.
All of these incidents were overseas. One was confirmed, and one or two more are suspected cases of pilot suicide.
When passengers have been able to intervene, they have defended their airplane 100% of the time.
When passengers have been prevented by regulatory means from defending themselves, they have failed to defend against a "trusted" figure turned attacker 100% of the time.
Sometimes the correct approach really is to do nothing.
As the other person commented: instances of pilot suicides like this occurred outside the US, not under FAA justification.
Also, why is it up to the airline to tell TSA whether I am enrolled in PreCheck or not? If it’s not on my boarding pass, I must not have PreCheck, huh? Department of Homeland Security isn’t really sure whether I have PreCheck or not.
Isn't that an improvement? You can't fly a security queue into a skyscraper or a crowded arena.
the terrorists have already won. They did more damage causing these security measures than any actual killing or bombing.
That's true, but sandwiches are not among them.
True story. My FIL tried to bring a jar of mayo through security and they made him throw it away.
OP you are allowed to bring solid foods without restriction but are still limited to 100cc for liquid/salsa/sauce even if it's sandwiched. Practically it is not strictly enforced if your sandwich looks edible, I've never had my pulled pork sandwiches analyzed.
So, technically, TSA is not being maximally strict in enforcing their rules when they allow any sandwich containing even tiny amounts of liquids like olive oil or gels like mayonnaise to enter outside the single 1 liter bag per person that also contains their shampoo and toothpaste. No, I don’t expect TSA ever to enforce this maximally strict interpretation, but that is how the rule is worded.
By contrast, some foreign airports that mention the 100ml rule make no mention of the single 1 liter (using the non-US spelling of liter) maximum enclosing container volume per passenger, let alone the requirements for the enclosing container to be a clear, zip-top, plastic bag. So this particular absurd pedantry about an absurdly worded rule that’s designed for TSA to keep you guessing on each screening about with how much leniency they choose to grace you that time does not apply to most foreign airports.
That's the theory. In practice, enforcement of the zip-top plastic bag rule is next to non-existent.
Next time consider bringing all liquid condiments in separate 100ml containers and applying them to your sandwich after security theater.
And isn’t the “waiting two hours an exaggeration”?
I flew out of MCO (Orlando) around spring break and while it was hectic, it wasn’t that bad just looking at the line. Of course I fly enough that having Clear and TSA pre-check makes sense.
I flew out of Atlanta - the busiest airport in the US for years and it didn’t take me that long to get through TSA even without PreCheck
https://www.ifly.com/hartsfield-jackson-atlanta-internationa...
https://www.ifly.com/orlando-international-airport/wait-time...
Well myself personally, I fly enough that it makes sense to have TSA PreCheck and Clear. But I wanted to find more relevant data than my anecdote - ie a few people in the Clear line and skipping to the front of TSA.
Why not sell fresh squeezed juices right as people get out of the security?
> Frozen liquid items are allowed through the checkpoint as long as they are frozen solid when presented for screening. If frozen liquid items are partially melted, slushy, or have any liquid at the bottom of the container, they must meet 3-1-1 liquids requirements.
https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/...
Take a major hub like LAX which is already segregated by groups of airlines across subsets of terminals. How many options do you have to choose from post-security for something as simple as burgers or pizza? Let alone something like pasta or something like Indian or Chinese food.
“We have both Panda Express and McDonalds” is not a sign of competition.
A big problem is that it often isn't a free market. Joe The Sandwich Guy can't just randomly decide to open up a store inside the airport. There's a limited amount of space, a lease can easily last a decade, and any that come up are usually granted rather than auctioned.
The airport is actively trying to provide a varied selection of products, which inherently means competition is limited: someone complaining about the price of a turkey sandwich isn't going to get a Big Mac solely because it is a few dollars cheaper.
All of this is often made even worse because they aren't actually different vendors. Multiple stores are often owned by the same vendor, the different stores are just "exploiting various retail strategies".
Nothing is actively illegal. Everyone just independently realized they could make a shitton of money because travelers are forced to either pay their prices or starve.
I’ve been in airports where the toilets behind security have ‘courtesy’ warm water at the faucets
Meanwhile Frankfurt tells you that the tap water in the restrooms is safe to drink. Absolutely absurd that Airports where you are effectively stuck for possibly hours and are paying for that priviledge can get away with not having to provide basic neccessities.
It's basically like a professional license. The system is designed to make you waste so much of your life and money entering the market that undercutting people by any appreciable amount is the last thing you'll do once you're there.
When I've turned the ipad around or covered the ipad's camera with a napkin, a worker has come by and forced me to face the ipad's camera back at me, even if I'm not buying anything. Dystopian.
> When I've turned the ipad around or covered the ipad's camera with a napkin, a worker has come by and forced me to face the ipad's camera back at me, even if I'm not buying anything.
Time to start carrying a bit of electrical tape to put over the cameras.
If you need something to eat in an airport, there’s a bunch of snack options you can bring in. It’s not a movie theater. I’ve brought in Nuts, sandwiches, home baked bread wrapped in tinfoil. TSA just doesn’t want you bringing in the liquids. Am I going to get a warm meal with a drink on the side? No. Will I be full? Yes. Will is save $15. Yes. Will it take some planning and prep work? Yes.
A. It’s less expensive
B. It tastes 100% better
I’ve found the dine-in restaurant options at EWR to be of reasonable quality, at least pre-pandemic. The food court areas are very hit or miss, even with the price gouging.
That is enough to keep you hydrated and getting a drink while traveling.
This is entirely overlooking the fact that you are a captive of the airport as long as the TSA screening process exists. At best, going through security is annoying and adds anywhere from 5 minutes to 2 hours of wait time, and at worst it is legitimately traumatizing.
Prices are high simply because people are punished for leaving on foot, and people are prohibited from bringing many goods through security.