TSA's knee jerk reaction: New pre and in-flight procedures/rules

[Armati]

I hate commercial air travel. I especially hate international commercial air travel. One of the few things that make it bearable is the GPS that lets me know that the hell ride will soon be over.

Back before they installed this feature on commercial aircraft I would use a Garmin Etrex. So now, just like the terrorist has to bring his own bomb on board, he will now have to bring his own GPS.

Oh, I can't wait for TSA to ban the Blackberry and iPhone!

[Irish]

My Garmin Nuvi works great on planes.

[YVK]

I flew back home from France yesterday. The second screening with pat-down added minimum of 1 hour to departure time, everybody with connecting flights got screwed; the pat-down was the only measure that made some sense.

In-flight map was turned off; I don't know if this was the cause, but entertainment system didn't work well. They showed 1.5 movies during 10+ hour flight. Of course, portable GPS could be easily brought on.

One hour no-movement period was offset by service crew delivering some snack during that time.

I still couldn't make out FAM; don't know if there were any on the plane.

Overall, with exception of delay for pat-down delay, the experience wasn't much different. Little bit more nonsensical stuff, otherwise all the same.

[Armati]

In other words, our 50 billion dollar Homeland Security system did nothing that would have stopped your average 17 year old Islamic terrorist.

The FAM program is a relic of the good old days of hijacking. A FAM will do NOTHING to stop a 17 year old Islamic terrorist who wants to blow up his pants.

And once again, it was a private citizen who acted quickly to put out the fire and subdue the terrorist.

[ST911]

Anyone with a origin, a destination, and a globe can figure out what they'll pass on a route, and about when they'll do so. Give me a break.

When I fly, I stick my Garmin in the window to help pass the time. I suspect AQ or the bad actor of the day owns a GPS or two as well. I wonder how long it will be before these are banned.

[Renegade]

They will have to shutdown WIFI on the planes too. Or filter out FlightAware. Of course someone with a proxy will still be able to get it.

[austinN4]

I too flew home on an international flight over the weekend. All passengers got patted down at boarding, but not very well. The patter downers seemed embarrassed to be doing it. Also, the carryon bag search at boarding was a joke. Ask me if I feel safer.

[Palmguy]

There is cloud cover over a lot of the US all the time. So some guy cant see Wash D.C. out the window due to cloud cover(or sitting in the middle seat and cant see out the window), but the pilot says "our route of flight today will take us over Wash D.C. and down into Savannah, GA". Any terrorist that knows anything about airplanes(and it has been proven time and time again that they know a lot more than we think they do) can plan(already has planned), and probably get close, time wise from say NYC down over Wash D.C. and be close enough(even though at 35k feet) to rain airplane parts down on the National Mall. Same would go for any city in the USA from any international destination. That is why they dont want us giving our route information to the passengers any more. If they dont know what route we are taking(even though we fly almost the same route all the time) it is much harder to go "ok 37 minutes into the flight we should be over XXX city, time to blow up my underwear bomb".

So you give them enough credit to be able to do an on-the-fly position/velocity calculation based on the pilot's little spiel but not enough to research the flight path of any particular flight prior to arriving at the airport?

[rjacobs]

So you give them enough credit to be able to do an on-the-fly position/velocity calculation based on the pilot's little spiel but not enough to research the flight path of any particular flight prior to arriving at the airport?

You think we fly in a straight line between two cities? The flight paths we take are really jacked up some times and dont make sense, especially some of the international flights. Lots of asia flights from the states go on the polar routes where they go across the north pole and back down the other side because its faster. Even from Europe to the states they will be super far north in Canada before dipping back down into the states. Other flights in the USA take you around large cities because they have to keep you out of the way of the arrival/departure traffic and you basically fly a big box around the city, which sucks because it obviously takes extra time.

[Palmguy]

You think we fly in a straight line between two cities? The flight paths we take are really jacked up some times and dont make sense, especially some of the international flights. Lots of asia flights from the states go on the polar routes where they go across the north pole and back down the other side because its faster. Even from Europe to the states they will be super far north in Canada before dipping back down into the states. Other flights in the USA take you around large cities because they have to keep you out of the way of the arrival/departure traffic and you basically fly a big box around the city, which sucks because it obviously takes extra time.

Of course not. But you can still go on that magical internet and find the flight plan for virtually any flight. Are those subject to change? Yes. But in the scenario you laid out, a flight from NYC down to Georgia, flight plans are out there and the chance of a deviation is probably relatively low. As you said, "we fly almost the same route all the time".