Disney Springs in Orlando has new metal detectors that you just walk through, wondering if airports will eventually feature the same. I kind of doubt it though.
20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?
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Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?
#12The interesting part to me is that the mode of attack for 9/11 can't easily be repeated. It depended on passengers assuming the plane was being hijacked, and that they would eventually be released. That stopped working on the 3rd (edit: 4th) plane. I don't see how it would work again. Passengers now default to assuming there's no path to live other than fighting back. Meaning many of the measures we still take aren't…
Any attempt at this, the terrorists will have a game plan of how to convince people on the flight to chill out, that they have no mal-intent towards the passengers, etc etc. I mean it might not work, but I reckon they'd put on a really good act and manipulate people heavily into making it feel like they are actually quite safe and it would be a poor decision to try and overrun them.
Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?
#13I thought the removal of shoes was a response to the Shoe Bomber plot, not 9/11? See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Reid
Correct, but I think the general escalation of security in airports which caught Richard Reid, was a direct response to 9/11 . Either Way, it is still mainly security theater to make passengers less apprehensive about taking what is still the safest mode of travel per passenger mile( there might be other metrics, but this is the only one I've read recently).
Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?
#14I try not to fly and this is one of the major reasons I find flying so annoying. I've been through airports where they just use bomb sniffing dogs, why can't that be the norm?
Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?
#15If you liked expanded government powers necessitated by the War on Terror, you're going to love the new biosecurity state. Remember, it is for your own safety!
>“I don’t see it changing,” said Lora Ries, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. “It never seems to be fewer requirements … the direction always seems to be for more.”
>Security screening, he said, will also be expanded to passenger drop-off points and airport and off-airport parking lots, in addition to walkways and tunnels approaching departure and ticket kiosks.
Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?
#16I thought shoes were due to Richard Reed, not 9/11?
https://www.fbi.gov/history/artifact-of-the-month/december-2...
Man I had no idea this even happened, I either forgot or never heard of it cause it seems to have been an open and shut event.
Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?
#17I thought the removal of shoes was a response to the Shoe Bomber plot, not 9/11? See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Reid
Correct, but I think the general escalation of security in airports which caught Richard Reid, was a direct response to 9/11 . Either Way, it is still mainly security theater to make passengers less apprehensive about taking what is still the safest mode of travel per passenger mile( there might be other metrics, but this is the only one I've read recently).
> Correct, but I think the general escalation of security in airports which caught the Richard Reid
Eh? But he wasn't caught due to airport security. He got onto the plane and tried to set off the bomb during the flight.
He would have been caught if someone had looked at his shoes.
Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?
#18The US is the only place I think I've had to remove shoes for flight security in years. But in Europe taking off a belt is often required while in the US it is not. In Budapest they stopped having us remove laptops from bags a bit ago. My biggest challenge over the years was remembering what to do in each place as the security people at the airports had a tendency to get upset if you didn't do it their preferred way.
Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?
#19Disney Springs in Orlando has new metal detectors that you just walk through, wondering if airports will eventually feature the same. I kind of doubt it though.
There's the body scanners, but I don't know if they can detect anything weird in shoes.
That said, how many shoe bombs have they intercepted? That should be a pretty good indication about whether it's still necessary, and I like to think the policy change (or lack thereof) is data-driven.
Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?
#20There was an underwear bomber though.