When word came down that 60 Minutes would be shining a spotlight on Allegiant’s safety record a couple weeks back, I assumed I knew what it was about; I was just curious if we’d learn anything new. We did not. Instead we were treated to a really terrible piece of …
Category: Safety/Security
Decoding the Design of In-Flight Seat Belts – Atlas Obscura
It takes skill to make an airplane seat belt into an interesting story, but Atlas Obscura did a great job of doing just that. Try to ignore Amy Fraher’s conspiracy-theory quotes and and just focus on what matters. An airplane …
Nearly everyone is aware of the large electronics ban (aka the laptop ban) that went into place earlier this year for flights from several Middle Eastern countries to the US. At the time, the justification was said to be the imminent threat of bombs in large electronics. In fact, there …
In the wake of the recent shooting in the baggage claim area in Ft Lauderdale Airport’s Terminal 2, there are a lot of questions being asked with few answers so far. The most important question that should be asked is… how can we make sure this won’t happen again?
In …
I couldn’t help but scratch my head when I saw the headline. “Newly passed air travel legislation is ‘an amazing win for consumers’.” Yes, the House, Senate, and President all miraculously agreed on a bill to do something. And that “something” extended FAA funding into next year. This …
Not one to sit on the sideline while Delta invests in security technology, American has announced it’s doing some investing of its own. American will be installing the same security lanes Delta put in Atlanta at its own hubs in LA, Miami, Chicago, and Dallas/Ft Worth. That was news when …
There’s been a lot of focus on the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) being underfunded lately. After all, those long lines could be fixed with more screeners, right? Well, yes but there is also the issue of efficiency. Couldn’t TSA just do a better job with the resources it has? Yes, …
I’ve taken three flights in the last couple of weeks and the Pre Check lines have been open for exactly none of them. Regular lines continue to get longer, and as we approach the peak summer period, the ugliness is coming to a head. The airline lobbying group A4A has …
Any time there’s a bombing like the one in Brussels earlier this week, the chorus of people suggesting knee-jerk reactions gets much louder. The explosions at the Brussels airport occurred before security, in the departure hall, and that has led to a lot of what may seem like rational thought …
After years of increasingly frustrating airport security experiences, the introduction of Pre Check seemed like the first step in reversing the trend. For those who signed up for it, Pre Check did create dramatic improvements. Since that time, however, plans have changed, and the original idea of having nearly everyone …
Has everyone heard about Boeing’s so-called self-cleaning lavatory prototype? Sounds great, but there’s some false advertising here. (It doesn’t actually clean itself. It sanitizes, which is totally different.) But it’s still a good idea, and the inevitable question is… why not do this on the entire airplane? The answer …
If you haven’t heard, it’s time for Congress to once again try to reauthorize the FAA. I say “try” because in general, Congress is really bad at this. Usually it just passes temporary extensions which keeps the lights on but does nothing to push the FAA forward. On occasion, it …