Back on October 26, I wrote about postal workers suing the post office over Anthrax. I pretty much disagreed with the idea, stating a few anti-patriotic reasons.
Now, a widow whose husband was on board one of two hijacked jets that slammed into the World Trade Center on September 11 filed suit against United Airlines, charging the carrier failed to provide adequate security.
While I invented a word in regards to what I thought about the Post Office lawsuit, I’m torn over the United Airlines lawsuit. As I stated in my earlier post, the events of September 11th could not have been forseen. They were so extraordinary, so outrageous, that had we seen them depicted in a movie, no one would have believed the possibility. So how could the Airlines prepare for such an event?
But we’ve all known that airline security is a joke and has been for a long time. Over the summer my wife and son traveled to LA from the wonderful Port Columbus International Airport. At the time my son was only 7 months old so she had to take a stroller. It was small enough that she could take it as carry-on luggage. When we got to the gate they would not let her walk through the metal detector with it but the stroller was to large to slide on the x-ray machine, even in its folded up state. So the gaurd told her to walk around the machines and metal detectors. When she did, they waved her on to her gate while I grabbed the other carry on bag. They never checked her or the folded stroller. Technically, we could have smuggled 4 pounds of coke to LA inside that thing. We didn’t, of course, but that’s not the point.
From what I know of the Airline industry, they act just like we expect a big corporation to act. Meaning, they don’t act at all. Instead of doing what’s right, like hiring expert security personnel, they hire people who sometimes can’t even speak the King’s English.
The Airline industry reminds me a lot of big tobacco. They have to be sued shitless before they will admit to anything. Despite the hijackings of the 80’s, they assume their security has always been fine.
Personally, I think for the Airline to really make any strides in security updates, they’ll have to be sued and dragged into court. Then we’ll learn just how unsafe flying is.
Last week a woman found a hand grenade in an overhead compartment as she boarding a flight. She alerted the flight crew. The plane was evacuated and the airport shut down. Then it was discovered it was a fake grenade that security was using as a test. They were checking to see if they could indeed still sneak it onboard post 9-11. Oh, here’s the good part: they forgot to remove the gernade before they let passengers board.
As long as this widow isn’t looking to make tons of money off of 9-11, I say drag their asses into court and teach the Airlines a lesson. Three months after 9-11 there have been no advances in Airline safety. Yeah, they are sticking a few Air Marshals on planes now, but that is not the type of security we need. We need big, fat, thick-ass doors with real locks between the passengers and the pilots.
What we need, actually, is common sense.