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Home Front
Feds Searching All Commercial Airplanes
2003-10-17
Authorities are searching every commercial airplane in the United States on Friday after someone left bags filled with claylike material, bleach and boxcutters on two Southwest Airlines flights, officials told Fox News. Whoever left the bags on planes in Houston and New Orleans left notes that said the writer was concerned about security on airplanes. It is unclear when the bags were left on the planes.
Posted by:Yosemite Sam

#6  Forget about TSA and security checks. That's pretty much "feel good" stuff and a move toward "full employment," and serves to weed out only the fools. Nothing being done today, except possibly the very limited body searches, can detect almost any of the items used by the 9/11 hijackers.

A single-edged razor blade (very, very small metal mass) embedded (melted) into a plastic toothbrush handle or the wood of a lead pencil, won't set off most metal detectors.

And, by the way, sharpening the long edge of a plastic credit card using a file makes a handy-dandy knife - something that the TSA folks know about, but have absolutely no way of addressing, sans taking everyone's credit cards away. (By the way, this idea's not new - been around for nearly 40 years - I learned this in the late-60's in military surviror's school).
Posted by: LVK   2003-10-17 6:42:16 PM  

#5  Aren't all the TSA guys part of the Government Services Union? (Or whatever the actual title is...)

So much for Solidarity...
Posted by: eLarson   2003-10-17 5:34:39 PM  

#4  Ya don't suppose this has anything to do with it:
Dallas-based Southwest Airlines Co. and its flight attendants' union began talks Tuesday under federal mediation, according to a Reuters report. The low-cost carrier and the flight attendants' union have been working unsuccessfully since May of last year to reach agreement on labor issues. The union wants the carrier to pay flight attendants higher wages and, in recent months, has publicly demonstrated its dissatisfaction with management via high-profile protests.
Gee, this is pretty high-profile, don't you think? Nah, no labor union would do anything like that.
Posted by: Steve   2003-10-17 4:27:03 PM  

#3  A couple of weeks ago I got one of my bags searched in Greensboro, NC. Maybe the half-empty bottle of wine got them suspicious. Fine by me. But they never looked in the bag that had a corckscrew in it. I mean, one of those to the eardrum wouldn't be fun.
Posted by: growler   2003-10-17 1:52:17 PM  

#2  Doesn't this make you feel all cozy and warm and SAFE?

It sounds like someone is doing their own 'safety tests'.

During another check on a plane in Houston, which came from Austin, workers found a similar package.

"A note in both packages indicated the items were intended to challenge the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoint security procedures," the Southwest statement said.


So instead of trying to find out how these items got on the plane (and fixing the problem) they are focusing on finding the person who did the 'test' - presumably for prosecution.
Posted by: CrazyFool   2003-10-17 1:22:30 PM  

#1  "A note in both packages indicated the items were intended to challenge the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoint security procedures," the Southwest statement said.

This makes it sound like it wasn't Binny's boys, they wouldn't leave a note like that. Wonder who did it?

Reporters seem the most likely, or some jackasses who think the Patriot Act is waiting in their toilet tank to jump out and grab them.
Posted by: Laurence of the Rats   2003-10-17 1:17:48 PM  

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