4 ms·

I think you're missing the point. The idea is to make it more difficult to stage an attack around a specific location, such as a heavily populated area or landm

by jm4 17y ago

I think you're missing the point. The idea is to make it more difficult to stage an attack around a specific location, such as a heavily populated area or landmark.

jrockway 17y ago
Airplanes have windows. Also, I could write a computer program to use my cell phone's GPS receiver to activate an electronic device at a given location. (Hell, I do this to turn off my ringtone at work.) Stuff that into the overhead compartment along with your bomb, and the plane is finished... at exactly the location you pre-program. (You don't even need to be on the plane. Put your bags in the overhead compartment, stuff some other bags in front of it, "oh shit, I forgot $foo in the terminal", done.)
- imajes 17y ago
  The don't need to be on a plane bit- if you end up leaving the plane once you've boarded, the plane isn't going to pull away from the gate till you're either back on the plane or everything you took onboard with you is deplaned. Now, that doesn't mean to say that you couldn't hide a bag onboard with such a device, and then make some kind of excuse that you have to go back to your office because there's some kind of emergency, and you won't be taking the flight after all. But then, you'll have had to somehow get your device into the sterile area (requiring accomplices who work there, or some surprisingly good luck getting through the x-ray scanners and explosive detection machines). In other words, the security we had pre 9/11, with a little bit of modernizing, does the job fine. The rest of it (shoes, liquids etc) are really just theatre.
- encoderer 17y ago
  Have you ever tried to leave a plane after boarding? This isn't fool proof but the FAA policy that my dad experienced years ago was that the passenger was dissuaded from leaving, the captain came out, and he was told that if he exits the plane they have to sweep it and because of that he'd be denied reentry. Passenger insisted. Argued a bit. Long story short, the passengers all had to disembark with their luggage and go back through security screening. And the flight crew presumably did their standard pre-boarding sweep. This was, oh, 2002 or so. I wouldn't be surprised if they even let you off the plane anymore, at least not until the 3-hours are up that the new regs mandate. And similarly, there has long been double-checks to make sure that no checked luggage is on a flight that isn't matched to a passenger. My understanding is that luggage that is freight checked (like, they lose your luggage and throw it on a later flight to get it to you) has to be more thoroughly screened.
  - jrockway 17y ago
    I have done it a few times, no questions asked. (The key is to have an excuse, like "I guess I need to gate-check this.")
  - lt 17y ago
    About a year ago they let me board the wrong plane. I was flying LAN, and the first leg of the flight, in the US, was operated by American Airlines. When I got to Miami for my connection to Peru, I showed my ticked to an AA employee at the gate and asked which gate the flight would leave. She pointed me to a nearby gate, I went there, waited about an hour, and boarded when they called everyone. They manually checked my ticket and gave me the stub back. When I reached my seat there was someone already there. He showed me his ticked stub and he had the same seat number as I did. As I was cursing the airline for overbooking, we noticed his ticket was printed by AA, mine was by LAN. Since I had just flown with AA with a LAN ticket, I thought it was OK. The flight attendant returned after a while telling me that LAN and AA both had flights to Peru at that same time and my flight was actually leaving from a completely different terminal. I had to run all the way across the airport, get a new ticket printed, go through security again to get to the right flight. Since my bags had been checked to the final destination, if the AA flight wasn't full and they hadn't sold the seat I had I might have never noticed the mistake.
    - andrewcooke 17y ago
      lan and aa share flights - you can book a lan flight and fly on an aa plane, or vice-versa, so this isn't that surprising (in fact, i think i have been in the same situation, but the other person was on the wrong flight. perhaps it was you? :o)
    - jrockway 17y ago
      For future reference, if you were being bumped from the flight (due to overbooking), you would never have been allowed on the plane. They don't just assign two people the same seat and hope that you two will resolve it on board the aircraft. It is strange that the agents were not following the correct boarding procedure, which is to scan the barcode on your boarding pass and to ensure that the computer's idea of your seat assigument agrees with what's printed on the pass. Usually, if they disagree, a new boarding pass is printed, and you board with that. (I like when they don't match, as the next words are usually, "oh, we had to upgrade you...") Also, by not scanning the barcode, the gate agent ensured that you would not automatically be credited with frequent-flyer miles. Highly unusual.
icey 17y ago
I didn't notice anything requiring that window blinds must be closed though; it doesn't really seem to me that it would be too hard to just look out the window and figure it out.
- mrduncan 17y ago
  Actually, I believe that it's an FAA regulation that the window shades stay open on emergency exit doors. I've never been on a flight where the flight attendants allowed those shades to be closed (even partially).
  - daten 17y ago
    Do those doors still have shades if they're never allowed to be closed?
    - mrduncan 17y ago
      All planes that I've ever been on have had shades, likely for the same reason that you still occasionally see ashtrays (although slightly different since they're usually screwed shut) on planes. The price to disable/retrofit simply isn't worth it to the airlines. Again, I'm not 100% sure that it's an FAA regulation - do we have any pilots/flight attendants on HN who could weigh in?
      - imajes 17y ago
        The regulation isn't applicable to the entire flight; it's perfectly ok to pull your blind down midway over the atlantic on a red-eye, for example.
- marltod 17y ago
  Closing all the windows is dangerous because the pilots have no way of seeing the wings. If there was damage, gas leak, fire on the wing a passenger or flight attendant needs to see it and alert the pilots. For example: http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123149266 http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123149266 It would be pretty easy to slip a gps antenna behind the shade before you closed it as well.
bmm6o 17y ago
Is that speculation, or have you seen that provided as an official rationale? It just doesn't make sense to me that someone would not blow up a plane just because it wouldn't be maximally effective.
- jm4 17y ago
  Umm... We all saw it happen September 11, 2001? You're right that an attacker probably wouldn't back out just because the attack wouldn't be maximally effective, but the result would still be reduced casualties. Ideally, you want to prevent all attacks, but even when you can't the next best thing is to reduce the severity.
  - bmm6o 17y ago
    So you're saying you don't think it's very effective as a deterrent, and you haven't seen it provided as an official rationale?
DannoHung 17y ago
Because Detroit has landmarks.
- jm4 17y ago
  Media have reported that the attacker was instructed to blow up the plane over US soil. It's possible there were even more specific instructions that we are not privy to. Pieces of a plane raining down over a major city could not only inflict significant casualties, but also creates a hell of a lot of fear.
  - roc 17y ago
    Fear, probably. Damage/Casualties on the ground? Not so much. Detroit jokes aside, Metro Airport is in Romulus. It'd take a staggering amount of either skill or luck to hit even one or two buildings with plane bits. And pedestrians essentially do not exist in Michigan. http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Detroit+Metro+airport&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=51.754532,114.169922&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Detroit+Metropolitan+Wayne+County+Airport,+Detroit,+Wayne,+Michigan+48242&t=h&z=13&iwloc=A http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&#38...
  - DannoHung 17y ago
    Detroit is not really a major city anymore. Cripes, remember when Flight 587 went down over Queens? 5 people on the ground were killed and Queens is about 4 times as densely populated as Detroit is.

by jm4 17y ago

I think you're missing the point. The idea is to make it more difficult to stage an attack around a specific location, such as a heavily populated area or landmark.

jrockway 17y ago

Airplanes have windows. Also, I could write a computer program to use my cell phone's GPS receiver to activate an electronic device at a given location. (Hell, I do this to turn off my ringtone at work.) Stuff that into the overhead compartment along with your bomb, and the plane is finished... at exactly the location you pre-program. (You don't even need to be on the plane. Put your bags in the overhead compartment, stuff some other bags in front of it, "oh shit, I forgot $foo in the terminal", done.)

imajes 17y ago
The don't need to be on a plane bit- if you end up leaving the plane once you've boarded, the plane isn't going to pull away from the gate till you're either back on the plane or everything you took onboard with you is deplaned. Now, that doesn't mean to say that you couldn't hide a bag onboard with such a device, and then make some kind of excuse that you have to go back to your office because there's some kind of emergency, and you won't be taking the flight after all. But then, you'll have had to somehow get your device into the sterile area (requiring accomplices who work there, or some surprisingly good luck getting through the x-ray scanners and explosive detection machines). In other words, the security we had pre 9/11, with a little bit of modernizing, does the job fine. The rest of it (shoes, liquids etc) are really just theatre.
encoderer 17y ago
Have you ever tried to leave a plane after boarding? This isn't fool proof but the FAA policy that my dad experienced years ago was that the passenger was dissuaded from leaving, the captain came out, and he was told that if he exits the plane they have to sweep it and because of that he'd be denied reentry. Passenger insisted. Argued a bit. Long story short, the passengers all had to disembark with their luggage and go back through security screening. And the flight crew presumably did their standard pre-boarding sweep. This was, oh, 2002 or so. I wouldn't be surprised if they even let you off the plane anymore, at least not until the 3-hours are up that the new regs mandate. And similarly, there has long been double-checks to make sure that no checked luggage is on a flight that isn't matched to a passenger. My understanding is that luggage that is freight checked (like, they lose your luggage and throw it on a later flight to get it to you) has to be more thoroughly screened.
- jrockway 17y ago
  I have done it a few times, no questions asked. (The key is to have an excuse, like "I guess I need to gate-check this.")
- lt 17y ago
  About a year ago they let me board the wrong plane. I was flying LAN, and the first leg of the flight, in the US, was operated by American Airlines. When I got to Miami for my connection to Peru, I showed my ticked to an AA employee at the gate and asked which gate the flight would leave. She pointed me to a nearby gate, I went there, waited about an hour, and boarded when they called everyone. They manually checked my ticket and gave me the stub back. When I reached my seat there was someone already there. He showed me his ticked stub and he had the same seat number as I did. As I was cursing the airline for overbooking, we noticed his ticket was printed by AA, mine was by LAN. Since I had just flown with AA with a LAN ticket, I thought it was OK. The flight attendant returned after a while telling me that LAN and AA both had flights to Peru at that same time and my flight was actually leaving from a completely different terminal. I had to run all the way across the airport, get a new ticket printed, go through security again to get to the right flight. Since my bags had been checked to the final destination, if the AA flight wasn't full and they hadn't sold the seat I had I might have never noticed the mistake.
  - andrewcooke 17y ago
    lan and aa share flights - you can book a lan flight and fly on an aa plane, or vice-versa, so this isn't that surprising (in fact, i think i have been in the same situation, but the other person was on the wrong flight. perhaps it was you? :o)
  - jrockway 17y ago
    For future reference, if you were being bumped from the flight (due to overbooking), you would never have been allowed on the plane. They don't just assign two people the same seat and hope that you two will resolve it on board the aircraft. It is strange that the agents were not following the correct boarding procedure, which is to scan the barcode on your boarding pass and to ensure that the computer's idea of your seat assigument agrees with what's printed on the pass. Usually, if they disagree, a new boarding pass is printed, and you board with that. (I like when they don't match, as the next words are usually, "oh, we had to upgrade you...") Also, by not scanning the barcode, the gate agent ensured that you would not automatically be credited with frequent-flyer miles. Highly unusual.

icey 17y ago

I didn't notice anything requiring that window blinds must be closed though; it doesn't really seem to me that it would be too hard to just look out the window and figure it out.

mrduncan 17y ago
Actually, I believe that it's an FAA regulation that the window shades stay open on emergency exit doors. I've never been on a flight where the flight attendants allowed those shades to be closed (even partially).
- daten 17y ago
  Do those doors still have shades if they're never allowed to be closed?
  - mrduncan 17y ago
    All planes that I've ever been on have had shades, likely for the same reason that you still occasionally see ashtrays (although slightly different since they're usually screwed shut) on planes. The price to disable/retrofit simply isn't worth it to the airlines. Again, I'm not 100% sure that it's an FAA regulation - do we have any pilots/flight attendants on HN who could weigh in?
    - imajes 17y ago
      The regulation isn't applicable to the entire flight; it's perfectly ok to pull your blind down midway over the atlantic on a red-eye, for example.
marltod 17y ago
Closing all the windows is dangerous because the pilots have no way of seeing the wings. If there was damage, gas leak, fire on the wing a passenger or flight attendant needs to see it and alert the pilots. For example: http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123149266 http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123149266 It would be pretty easy to slip a gps antenna behind the shade before you closed it as well.

bmm6o 17y ago

Is that speculation, or have you seen that provided as an official rationale? It just doesn't make sense to me that someone would not blow up a plane just because it wouldn't be maximally effective.

jm4 17y ago
Umm... We all saw it happen September 11, 2001? You're right that an attacker probably wouldn't back out just because the attack wouldn't be maximally effective, but the result would still be reduced casualties. Ideally, you want to prevent all attacks, but even when you can't the next best thing is to reduce the severity.
- bmm6o 17y ago
  So you're saying you don't think it's very effective as a deterrent, and you haven't seen it provided as an official rationale?

DannoHung 17y ago

Because Detroit has landmarks.

jm4 17y ago
Media have reported that the attacker was instructed to blow up the plane over US soil. It's possible there were even more specific instructions that we are not privy to. Pieces of a plane raining down over a major city could not only inflict significant casualties, but also creates a hell of a lot of fear.
- roc 17y ago
  Fear, probably. Damage/Casualties on the ground? Not so much. Detroit jokes aside, Metro Airport is in Romulus. It'd take a staggering amount of either skill or luck to hit even one or two buildings with plane bits. And pedestrians essentially do not exist in Michigan. http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Detroit+Metro+airport&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=51.754532,114.169922&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Detroit+Metropolitan+Wayne+County+Airport,+Detroit,+Wayne,+Michigan+48242&t=h&z=13&iwloc=A http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&#38...
- DannoHung 17y ago
  Detroit is not really a major city anymore. Cripes, remember when Flight 587 went down over Queens? 5 people on the ground were killed and Queens is about 4 times as densely populated as Detroit is.