It is so frustrating to see a lot of the “solutions” being proposed by the administration: wanting to hire
more screeners, blaming passengers for bringing too many pesky bottles of water and pocket knives, etc. They are missing the obvious solution that should be at the top of the list, right in front of their faces: we must REMOVE “safeguards” to speed things up.
The probability that a bottle of water or anything that looks like water will cause an airline disaster is effectively ZERO. It is not a risk, and not even slightly concerning, period. This is not worth checking even once, even at random, much less millions of times a day.
And pocket knives? They SERVE FOOD WITH KNIVES on planes. They literally give you a knife in first class. If it was someone’s goal to obtain a knife on board, they would not need to bring it through security. And frankly, one could argue that knives are the opposite of risky: a few passengers with knives to defend themselves may very well be able to prevent a handful of hijackers from doing anything. Either way, I am strongly on the side of “teach people to band together and defend themselves”, not “cower and be fearful of everything”.
And don’t even get me started on having to take off shoes. It is frankly sad that we have been so fixated on ONE piece of clothing, for years and years and years, as a reaction to ONE passenger out of millions who couldn’t even carry out his “threat” successfully.
Besides, the entire concept of “prohibited items” does not eliminate risk. There are human beings who are powerful enough and skilled enough to cause serious damage or death all by themselves. They don’t need “prohibited items”, they simply are deadly. A group of passengers that knows how to band together and fight back can subdue anyone, even a passenger that is deadly all by himself.