Flying

I recently got back from Las Vegas (went to go see Penn & Teller and Spamalot), and had the pleasure of flying on an airplane there and back. I wasn’t searched or hassled or anything like that — being in the majority pays off, I suppose — but what bothered me more was the general incompetence everywhere.

This is a little personal post. I’ll have a few of these in the next day or so. I’ll be back to posting serious articles shortly.

First off, I decided at the last minute to go in and change my shirt. Originally I was wearing this t-shirt, but I realized it might not be the smartest thing to wear to an airport.

Things started off badly. There was a terminal set up for us to retrieve tickets from, only the one we used refused to print anything. When it was supposed to be printing, the screen went blank for a second, then we were given a glimpse of a Windows desktop with an application minimized, then the program restarted. We had to have the guy behind the counter print the tickets manually.

Once on the plane from Sacramento to Las Vegas, little 10 or so inch screens dropped down from the plane ceiling to show an instructional video. I know it was an instructional video because I heard the audio. The video was horribly distorted, reminding me of watching over-the-air TV with the coaxel cable only barely connected.

On the flight back things appeared to be going more smoothly. We got there early, sped through the security screening, and waited almost two hours for a delayed flight. Not anyone’s fault, just a result of the weather. After landing, however, we found that our luggage was nowhere to be found. After checking every piece of luggage, we went to an official looking office next to the baggage claim and learned that according to their records our luggage hadn’t been on our flight. We checked the luggage in more than two hours before the flight, so this was somewhat surprising. They said they would try to find the lost luggage and send it to us.

Anyway, as we were leaving I started thinking about the way the baggage is distributed. Anyone can pick up anything, and no one checks to make sure you actually own what you walk out with. It seems to me that this is exactly the sort of thing airport security should be handling. A lot has been sacrificed to make airports and airplanes safer from terrorists, but I don’t know how much overall good it has really done. The “spot checking” or whatever it’s called seems inefficient at best and borderline unhelpful at worst. From seeing videos of the 9/11 hijackers, it seems like they were well-rehearsed, almost calm, and definitely trying not to stand out. In contrast, the people that seem to be singled out for searches are the ones that are nervous, unprepared, etcetera.

Anyway, I’m no security expert, and I don’t have any better ideas, so I guess this is the best we can do for now.