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Catching a Flight? Budget Hours, Not Minutes, for Security

nytimes.com

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Re: Catching a Flight? Budget Hours, Not Minutes, for Security

#381

Post by wutbrodo »

cookiecaper wrote: post #318
strictnein wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did exactly that at MSP (Minneapolis/St. Paul), almost literally. They recently consolidated the checkpoints from 4 down to 2. No one knows why, but they did. Security immediately went from 30 minutes to 2 hours. They blamed everything from funding (which they received $91 million more than they asked for in 2016) to people's bags (which somehow changed overnight). When the local government and our fed reps comp…

One time I went through, PreCheck was being hawked actively. Random people were getting automatic PreCheck allowances on their boarding passes so they could "try it out". Very commercial vibe around that.

This happens all the time; I've gotten it quite a few times. I always assumed it was just to randomly lighten the load, but the commercial thing makes a lot of sense too.

Re: Catching a Flight? Budget Hours, Not Minutes, for Security

#382

Post by superuser2 »

astrodust wrote: post #376
superuser2 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are basically useless, but we still have to go through them to get to our flights. The fewer staff they have, the slower it goes. A sufficiently resourced-starved TSA might "succeed" at preventing attacks on passenger air travel by eliminating passenger air travel altogether. Once lines approach 4, 5 hours people will just drive.

Travelling by train is so ridiculously refreshing. Grab ticket online or at kiosk. Walk on train. Sit down. There's nothing even close in the air travel world. Even Nexus people have to endure the occasional cavity search.

Isn't Amtrak plagued by horrific delays? The Chicago to NYC time is 20 hours by the schedule, and anecdotally 5-7 more hours waiting for freight trains is pretty common. Don't have real data or personal experience though.

Re: Catching a Flight? Budget Hours, Not Minutes, for Security

#383

Post by wutbrodo »

tacon wrote: post #238
shawkinaw wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty much what this app does: http://gomiflight.com

Great, thanks! Can they generate press releases and statistics about average and peak wait times per airport? Maybe their penetration isn't hitting a critical mass. I'd love to see a live dashboard that shows "X number of people have been standing in line for Y minutes in city Z", or "the worst lines in the US airport system right now are A, B, and C". Reporters could then just show that display to the TSA press shil…

There are plenty of great applications of crowdsourced data but the problem with this stuff is always incentivizing people to contribute instead of just consume. It's a non-trivial marketing trick that products like Waze have managed (a big part of why Google didn't fold them into Maps entirely was to maintain the community), but it's certainly not a surefire thing.

Re: Catching a Flight? Budget Hours, Not Minutes, for Security

#384

Post by wutbrodo »

cookiecaper wrote: post #326
chrisbennet wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or deaths due to people driving instead of flying. "Increased delays and added costs at U.S. airports due to new security procedures provide incentive for many short-haul passengers to drive to their destination rather than flying, and, since driving is far riskier than air travel, the extra automobile traffic generated has been estimated in one study to result in 500 or more extra road fatalities per year." https://…

It's not really worth it to fly if your destination is Example itinerary: Flight leaves at 6:00pm, gotta be there bare minimum 1 hour early, preferably 2+, going to split the different and say 90 mins. Leave home at 4pm, drive 35 min to airport. Wait in line 15 mins to check bag. Allocate generous 20 mins for a quick security scan (this can blow up to 60 mins+ if it's a busy day and/or your airport sucks, but 20 mins…

It's 6-7 hours to drive home vs a 1 hour flight for me, and I _still_ sometimes prefer road travel. 7 hours of uninterrupted time is far better than the excruciating start-stop-wait-walk-wait-walk-shut_off_devices of air travel. Especially for a 1 hour flight, there's usually like a 20 minute window where I can actually use my laptop and even reading a book is a pain when you're standing in a line.

Re: Catching a Flight? Budget Hours, Not Minutes, for Security

#385

Post by simoncion »

petemc_ wrote: post #347
fapjacks wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, before 9/11 you didn't have to check your firearms. You could carry them on as long as they were in a case. Things were more reasonable back then.

A lot of people wouldn't consider it reasonable to allow people to carry guns around, least of all on a plane.

It turns out that many people have silly -yet strongly held- beliefs. :) shrug

Re: Catching a Flight? Budget Hours, Not Minutes, for Security

#386

Post by wutbrodo »

rubidium wrote: post #75
jessriedel wrote: post #7

Why does the NYTimes quote tweets -- essentially publishing the shouts of strangers on the street -- before they report actual data like the change in the number of TSA screeners?

Because most people like stories more than data.

Yea, and "most people" like racy pictures too. That doesn't mean news organizations like the NY Times that still have some dignity left to shred should start putting racy photos in every article. Just as "most people like stories" doesn't mean they should be quoting random tweets.

Re: Catching a Flight? Budget Hours, Not Minutes, for Security

#387

Post by MichaelGG »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #200
jerf wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a large number of places with densely packed people. The unique thing about airports is their access to airplanes and their capacity to be used as weapons. (I'm taking a broad view of "weapon" here; even old-school hijack-and-divert is still a political "weapon".) If it weren't for that, they wouldn't be particularly interesting and wouldn't need special security. If someone blows up the line, well, they di…

> The unique thing about airports is their access to airplanes and their capacity to be used as weapons. That problem was solved on 9/11 the instant the public realized the possibility. Before people wouldn't fight back because they would rather be ransomed than killed. Now that everyone knows their choices are fight or die, every person on the plane would fight to the death to prevent a terrorist from taking control…

It shouldn't have been a problem in the first place. In many cities, you cannot access the driver's portion of a taxicab. Yet airplanes had less separation. Pilots should never give controls over, and there should be strong, locked, doors.

The lack of toilet sorta ruins the whole design. There's still a critical window where the door is open to the cabin, even though blocked by a food cart. But I suppose you'd need to be Bruce Lee to jump over it and get into the cabin while taking out two pilots and a FA.

Re: Catching a Flight? Budget Hours, Not Minutes, for Security

#389

Post by wutbrodo »

ww520 wrote: post #317

Somehow I automatically got TSA Pre that last time I passed security and moved through the Pre line, which is much faster. I'm thinking to just get Global Entry which covers TSA Pre and lasts five years.

You should definitely get Global Entry; it's incredible. It was extremely low-hassle to get and worth 10x the cost. I got it for the TSA Pre but coming off of a 25-hour flight and not having to fill out any form or go through immigration AT ALL is amazing.

Re: Catching a Flight? Budget Hours, Not Minutes, for Security

#390

Post by tombrossman »

dawnerd wrote: post #244
lettergram wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't get a warning, but I did have my bag opened, all my belongings thrown out on the ground, and was delayed for 30-45 minutes... All this because I had a box of poptarts that apparently looked like a bomb.

Thats funny. I had an unopened box of amazon aa batteries which really looked like a bomb on the x-ray (got to see it when they were inspecting). We both laughed about it when the lady saw what it was. I could tell he was really nervous though. Took me all of 5 minutes to resolve. Guess some tsa agents are just not very good at their job.

I flew from Atlanta a while back with a bunch of Trader Joe's 'Pound Plus' chocolate bars and a ten pound (!) Ghirardelli chocolate bar in my carry-on which got quite a reaction. The poor girl doing the screening seemed to think an explosion was imminent and was visibly distressed, quickly leaving her post and grabbing a supervisor. For those that don't know, big chocolate bars are organic material and look like explosives and I've seen this happen before - I was waiting to see the reaction.

The supervisor and the girl came back and I laughed and said 'clearly you have spotted my giant chocolate bar', and volunteered all the standard answers (yes I packed this myself, it's been with me the whole time, etc) and they calmed down. I was worried they were going to want to open the package which was a gift and I didn't want them all riled up.

We all learned something that day, they learned that big ten-pound chocolate bars are a real thing and I learned that terrorists can probably carry bombs on board as long as they are sealed in a Ghirardelli box. TSA didn't even bother with the swabs or sniffer dog.

Bottom line is that TSA agents have no skin in the game, if they miss dangerous items it's the passengers who suffer the loss, not the agents standing safely at their posts on the ground at the airport.

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