Airport security concern...

[Rodion Romanovich]

I'm a bit concerned about the security on our airports. Despite all high-tech surveillance, it's possible to hijack a plane without making anything illegal or anything difficult at all up till the very second the hijacking takes place. Here's how: You just walk through the passport control with a legal passport, with cabin baggage containing no weapons at all through x-ray scan or whatever it is, and you pass through the metal detector without any problems. None of these security measures will detect anything suspicious, because you don't do anything suspicious at this point. Then you go to the tax free shops between the passport control and buy a bottle of wine. Continue to the gate and the plane, and check in. You still haven't done anything suspicious or illegal at this point, so nobody will stop you, and none of the guys watching surveillance cameras will react at all. Then you board the plane, sit down and put on the safety belt when the sign is up, being a good obedient aircraft passenger. When you feel the right time has come, you quickly break the bottle of wine, use the sharp broken bottle as a weapon, and do whatever previous hijackers have been doing with razors and knives.

I think this is a major problem in airport security and should be addressed. Allowing selling of wine bottles and the possible existence of many other dangerous items that could be used as weapons BETWEEN plane and cabin bag scanners is pretty strange when at the same time it isn't allowed to carry scissors through the cabin bag controls.

I'd like to hear what your opinions on this are. Personally I think what is sold beyond the cabin baggagge scanners should be controlled a little better and selling of wine or anything else in glass bottles should be forbidden in that location.

Oh and finally, if any poster here is a representative of a government that wants to hire my consult services to look over their security systems just PM me and I offer my services for a mere 50$ an hour excluding travel costs.

I'm posting this here rather than sending it to the police because I think the weakness is so obvious that terrorists probably have already discovered it (it struck me the moment I saw it even though I was thinking about Europa Barbarorum and other non-related things - I wasn't even trying to find such security loopholes and still found it against my own will) and there's therefore hopefully nothing to lose in announcing it plus I don't know who I should contact about a thing like this, I don't know which number to call or where to send an email. I hope that any army related person or any other poster here that knows who to contact about such a problem as this does so as soon as possible to avoid terrorists using this weakness in the security before it has been corrected.

[doc_bean]

Someone will always find a way, I say we go back to the old days, if half the passengers are carrying knives and/or potential weapons the highjackers will have a harder time than they would know if they used your wine bottle trick.

Arm everyone, it's the american way :2cents:

[Rodion Romanovich]

Someone will always find a way, I say we go back to the old days, if half the passengers are carrying knives and/or potential weapons the highjackers will have a harder time than they would know if they used your wine bottle trick.

Arm everyone, it's the american way

No, not at all, that would create obvious problems. Removing the selling of dangerous things in the area between passport controls and the gates is a loophole that is easy to close.

[doc_bean]

I'm just tired of all those security measures that just annoy regular people and do very little about the actual problem. Al Qaida could be teaching their new recruits kung fu so they could hijack planes :boxing:

[Rodion Romanovich]

I'm just tired of all those security measures that just annoy regular people and do very little about the actual problem. Al Qaida could be teaching their new recruits kung fu so they could hijack planes :boxing:

it's twice as annoying if they're annoying without having any effect at all because greed makes airports want to sell space for shops in the area between controls and the gates, or is it not greed but lack of thought? :dizzy2: Also if it's still that easy to hijack a plane then people could ask why the **** the surveillance of ordinary citizens outside airports and other restrictions of privacy are made if it has no effect other than infringing democratic rights and bringing western society closer to dictatorship. Airport controls are a valid and useful way of stopping terrorism directed at civilians. Restricting democratic rights is not. I hope airport security controls are improved.

[Lemur]

With enough karatism, you could hijack anything you like because your hands would be lethal weapons. Just ask Chuck Norris.

Ninja mastery defeats terrorism every time.

[discovery1]

After 911 NO ONE would just sit by and let the plane be hijacked. A broken bottle just wouldn't cut it me thinks.

And lemurs right. If they care enough, then they can be trained in martial arts and try to hijack a plane using that. Sure the restricted space of the plane reduces the attacks one could use, but a side or push kick doesn't need any space side to side.

[Csargo]

With enough karatism, you could hijack anything you like because your hands would be lethal weapons. Just ask Chuck Norris.

Ninja mastery defeats terrorism every time.

Chuck Norris is awesome. He came to my High School a year or two ago. It was crazy.:2thumbsup:

[solypsist]

you forgot about air marshalls that carry tasers, stunguns, etc. they'll stop a wine-bottle wielding fool anytime.

[Papewaio]

Are there enough for every plane trip?

Now for truly stupid go no further then Sydney Airside Tours (http://www.airsidetarmactours.com/):


Airside Tarmac Tours is an Australian first and was possibly the first tour of its kind in the world. The tour brings the airport and its operations to the people by taking them inside the perimeter fence, or AIRSIDE at Sydney's Kingsford Smith Airport.
...
Our standard tour takes people on board our bus inside the fence at Sydney Airport. For a ninety minute, 22 kilometre guided tour, you will pass the Virgin and Qantas domestic aprons, go through the Qantas jet base and across the international freight and passenger terminal aprons. Throughout this section of the tour the bus is on the tarmac with the aircraft as they push back in front of, and taxi around us making their way to and from the ends of the airfield. The bus is then driven out along side the main north/south runway past the meteorological station to the southern end of the airfield and back up the other side. The bus is able to pull off to the side of the road and park at this point less the 80 metres from the edge of the runway to watch the arrivals and departures of aircraft from a vantage point previously inaccessible to the general public.

Other unique points of interest passed along the way include the fire station of the Rescue Fire Fighting Service, the air traffic control tower, Sydney Heliport and the general aviation areas. Throughout the tour, passengers are treated to an expert commentary from our driver/guide who is always happy to answer any questions asked.


You too can have your major airport taking tourist and terrorists both with cameras to behind the scenes locations at your airport to showoff security flaws in you system.


Airside Tarmac Tours and 'REX' (Regional Express) Airlines conduct a 'combination' tour that not only includes a tour on 'the other side of the fence' of Sydney Airport, champagne and prawns, but also a30- 45 minute scenic flight over one of four routes, determined on the evening of departure.

And just in case you are a terrorist yhey will give you the champagne bottle and a quick scenic flight so you can take charge straight away.
:oops:

[naut]

I'm a bit concerned about the security on our airports.
You should be, in my expierence security is "supposedly" really advanced and good. But when I flew to South Africa last year, I forgot that there was a pen knife and matches in my hand luggage and the security did not pic it up!!! Then on the flight back I had an african tribal club (a fairly hefty piece of wood) in my hand luggage, and yet again they failed to pick that up, even though I declared it a CUSTOMS!!!

It really scares me, that they are that lax about security!!!

[KafirChobee]

Easy to check facts about A.P. secuity:
1) +50% turn over every year since 9/11.
2) minimum wage average is $8.00 per hour - not worth the BS.
3) imagine putting up with people that have to stand in lines +3 hours just to board a plane. Imagine working with the public .... period.
4) Training is all but non-existant, and appreciation is non-existant.
5) The top security guys make 1,000 times the people doing the work they aren't really trained for and abuse the workers accordingly.
6) Terrorists are clever than someone making $8.00 (or less) an hour - or those making 1,000 times that.
7) It is easier to deceive than to believe. After screaning 100,000 people in a day one gets sloppy or compliant in thinking things are OK - especially if you are being paid $8.00 an hour or haven't been trained to look for specific things about an individual.
8) Terrorists are well trained to blend in.
9) The Airport security system, as is the ports - is being run by politically selected individuals just as FIMA's was.
10) Nothing has really changed sinced 9/11, except that a few machines were bought from politicallyconnectedCorporations that would have been bought anyway - because they were "pioneers" (brought in a buncha money for Bush43).
11) The Airlines do not care so much about security as their new bottomline - they figure security ain't their job - it's everyone elses. e.g. Big Brother
12) bottom line - you get what you pay for. And, if no one wants to pay the help for putting up with the BS, or train them, or teach basic psyche (body language). Well, you get what you pay for.

Sooner than later a 9/11/01 incident will go down. It is just a matter of timing. You can bet they are testing the systems inplace as we discuss the improbability of it ever happening again.

IMO, minimum wage for a AP security officer ought to be +$35K, it ensures competence.

[Fragony]

No matter how good a system is, if you can get the right people to look the other way you can fly a terminator from Baghdad to washinton.

[Al Khalifah]

It was proven recently that it is possible to easily smuggle guns onto airplanes. Between 8 passengers, three guns were dismantled into basic parts and each part type given to one passenger so that it looked very little like an offensive weapon through an x-ray scanner.
The ammunition was modified in such a way to look like keychains and such commonly avaialable to tourists at sights of historical significance. Once on the plane, all the passengers would have had to do was reasemble the weapons and then they would've had 3 guns - easily enough to kill the sky marshall and sieze the plane.

Simple.

[Watchman]

The guys at the martial arts school my brother goes to have actually been wondering why the terrorists don't just take the biggest lugs from amongst their would-be martyrs and put them onto a diet of steroids and pumping iron. I mean, they should be willing to make the sacrifice right ? Then if someone tries to get in the way during a hijack they can just topple themselves onto the troublemakers (the biceps getting in the way kind of leave anything more sophisticated out of the options)...
Heck, even if they get killed they still ought to make good barricades to fortify the control room with.

[Fragony]

The guys at the martial arts school my brother goes to have actually been wondering why the terrorists don't just take the biggest lugs from amongst their would-be martyrs and put them onto a diet of steroids and pumping iron. I mean, they should be willing to make the sacrifice right ? Then if someone tries to get in the way during a hijack they can just topple themselves onto the troublemakers (the biceps getting in the way kind of leave anything more sophisticated out of the options)...
Heck, even if they get killed they still ought to make good barricades to fortify the control room with.

You are forgetting that most planes have armed covert cops onboard.

[Watchman]

That much mass ought to make a pretty good bullet-stopper then.

[English assassin]

You are forgetting that most planes have armed covert cops onboard.

No they don't. Except El Al.


After 911 NO ONE would just sit by and let the plane be hijacked. A broken bottle just wouldn't cut it me thinks

If we are safe on planes at all, this is why. The rules of hijacking changed on 9/11. Before you could waive a waterpistol and all the passengers would sit quietly in their places until being freed a free days later. Now you want to hijack a plane you had better have a plan to deal with 200 passengers charging up the aisles at you.

No one, other than Chuck Norris, is going to be able to deal with that.

[Watchman]

Thanks to which whatever nefarious plots are being hatched in some Central Asian cave most likely don't involve passenger jets.

No, seriously. September Eleven worked because it took people by surprise, putting an entirely new twist to the old hijack routine. The momentum of surprise was, however, spent pretty much immediately, and getting a rerun work at all is somewhat dubious at best.
Which is why whatever the next big one eventually may be, it's going to be something rather different and will probably also catch people off guard.

[Husar]

Everyone in a plane ought to have a red button which will immediate detonate the whole plane, that way any hijacker can be stopped.:inquisitive:

Just think about it, you don´t need a piece of glass to be dangerous, ever learned martial arts?
So to stop hijacking by Judo fighters we should disallow people on planes?

[Rodion Romanovich]

Here's an idea: :idea2: all plane travelers are put to sleep by doctors in the airport and carried to the plane, then carried out of the plane at the other airport and not allowed to be awake during the entire trip! :idea2:

[English assassin]

Here's an idea: :idea2: all plane travelers are put to sleep by doctors in the airport and carried to the plane, then carried out of the plane at the other airport and not allowed to be awake during the entire trip! :idea2:

Sounds fine to me. If mankind has invented anything more boring that flying i don't know what it is.

[Al Khalifah]

I'd be in favour of that. At least then I wouldn't mind being crammed into a plane like sardines in a can for my economy class Manchester to Las Vegas non-stop flight...

[solypsist]

that's two bad ideas in a row: first was the wine bottle thing (and yes, all u.s. planes all have air marshalls if they seat over 75 people). the second is what happens if the plane has to make an emergency landing? all the sleeping people die? or if a pilot has a heart attack - wake everybody up and ask if anyone is a doctor? there's already an anesthesia solution for people who want to sleep on the plane, it's called the airport bar.


Here's an idea: :idea2: all plane travelers are put to sleep by doctors in the airport and carried to the plane, then carried out of the plane at the other airport and not allowed to be awake during the entire trip! :idea2:

[Al Khalifah]

what happens if the plane has to make an emergency landing?
Most people die in all but the best managed emergency landings anyway. If you weren't going to die in a plane crash then being asleep would make only a minor difference to your chances of survival. At least this way you'd die pleasantly rather than screaming.

or if a pilot has a heart attack - wake everybody up and ask if anyone is a doctor?
No, ask the co-pilot to land the plane. Don't open the cabin door unless the plane is on the ground.

[yesdachi]

After 911 NO ONE would just sit by and let the plane be hijacked.
Possibility the truest thing I have ever seen in the backroom.:bow:


As to the human weapon idea, forget karate and focus on PCP! A couple juiced up wackos would tear a plane apart.

[Husar]

Here's an idea: :idea2: all plane travelers are put to sleep by doctors in the airport and carried to the plane, then carried out of the plane at the other airport and not allowed to be awake during the entire trip! :idea2:
And then some terrorists manage to fake their sleep...
Or some thieves, or some rapists, or...:inquisitive:


As to the human weapon idea, forget karate and focus on PCP! A couple juiced up wackos would tear a plane apart.
I said Judo because it´s better for small rooms like in a plane I heard.
And what is PCP?

[Aenlic]

And what is PCP?

Phencyclidine. It's a powerful tranquilizer and dissociative hallucinogenic. It might still be used as an animal tranquilizer; but it's illegal for humans. On the street, it's called Angel Dust among other things. Interestingly, PCP has a connection to another thread waaaay over there -----> in which glutamate neurotransmitters were mentioned. PCP disrupts the way those glutamates in the brain transmit neural messages.

[Sensei Warrior]

I am going to tentitively add my two cents in. At the airport near me you can't board the plane with ANYTHING. No pens, pencils, bottle openers, lighters, nail files, scissors, excessively large keychains (I wonder what the 'official' parameters are on that one), and partically anything else your average underpaid wageslaves think might pose a threat, like cellphones, ipods (can you believe it), and pdas. The list is enormous. They have the tendancy to confiscate everything. I'm not too sure what acrobatics you have to go through to get it back.

Of course, as stated once you get past the check point you can go into one of those lil shops and buy back practically everything they took from you. I never thought of it, but it seems like airport security could just be a scam to get you to buy more stuff.

I think its all rather ridiculous, no offense to anyone who feels different. If I flew often,I might think start to consider it my civic duty to start going into those shops just to see how much stuff I couldn't have, just moments before, I could openly buy and blatantly carry on the flight.

I agree with the people who say that post 9-11 highjackings are going to play out alot differently because of what happened. I also believe most of the terrorists have the impression that 9-11 made plan high-jackings to hard to bother with. The next big terrorist thng wil come from somewhere else.

[discovery1]

No pens, pencils, bottle openers, lighters, nail files, scissors, excessively large keychains (I wonder what the 'official' parameters are on that one), and partically anything else your average underpaid wageslaves think might pose a threat, like cellphones, ipods (can you believe it), and pdas.

This is not true. At least not at O'Hare, McCarren(LAs Vegas Inter national), El Paso, and a little place called Rockford. And Urbana-Champaign airport. They let me carry on pens, penciles, eraser shields, cellphones, and my laptop plus lots of games. They even let me carry on scissors in St. Louis. And I am on a watch list. Course you live in New York.

[Crazed Rabbit]

I recall reading about some terrorist correspondance from some terrorists in England (?) who wanted to highjack a plane, and were thinking about just getting 30 or so big 'brothers' on one flight and taking over the plane, just trying to take it down, not crash it anyplace special. Apparently, they were having a hard time finding that many people willing to die.

Which is good, since US airport security couldn't check all those suspicious characters, for fear of being relentlessly sued by those defenders of stupidity, the ACLU.

Crazed Rabbit