Anyone who travels by plane knows the basic drill, although details change from time to time and place to place. Repeatedly show identification and ticket purchase. Empty your pockets and remove all coins (if more than a few) and metal. Remove the belt you are wearing and your shoes. Take your laptop out of its container and place it in a tray. Have all carry-ons and everything removed from one's person inspected.
Submit to personal body search as well, especially when buying a ticket late. Answer questions about anything that might be suspcious such as nail clippers or non-prescription liquid medicine. Make decisions as to the relative merits of hanging on to any disputed items, forfeiting them, or trying to check them as additional luggage, and beginning the process over again.
Millions of people go through this somewhat stressful and exhausting process every day, often as a part of long lines. As a result more and more people are re-evaluating decisions to fly: trains and cars increasingly get one to one's destination faster.
Yet, with all these precautions--and many billions of dollars a year in spending to enforce them--49 people were killed yesterday in a Comair Flight from Lexington, Kentucky to Atlanta, Georgia when the pilot chose the wrong runway. One wonders what safeguards are in effect to prevent this relatively common mistake from occurring.
Eight years ago, a former Federal Aviation Administration official, Anthony Broderick, said that Comair was not operating at the highest level of safety. One wonders and doubts that Comair was any time subject to the minute scrutiny that passengers with suspicious habits like wearing belts,or making last minute flight changes or ticket purchasers, or carrying laptops, or carrying non-prescription medicine are.
I have never lost my boyish wonder that one can travel so far so fast by air. Nor have I lost my ingrained skepticism that a lot of the scrutiny generated by the threat of terrorism is somewhat cosmetic.
Much more scrutiny and preventive measures should be generated at daily airline operations. How much could it possibly cost to fill short runways with large signs warning pilots that these runways are for only limited types of planes?
Anyone who flies, along with their families and circle of friends, is somewhat affected emotionally by plane crashes. Millions of Americans refuse to travel by plane under any circumstances. One hears from time to time of people changing jobs or declining promotions to avoid flying. The sense that death can occur, at any time,on any flight, through no fault of one's own, troubles many.
I first heard of Comair a couple of weeks ago, when I took Comair flights from Nashville, where the National Conference of State Legislatures was meeting, to the hub in Atlanta, and then to Philadelphia. The Council of State Legislatures, whose Eastern Regional Conference I attended when it met in Philadelphia earlier this month, is headquartered in Lexington and, I would guess, has staff who fly Comair to Atlanta and beyond.
The federal government has two agencies that we all we be learning more about as the investigation unfolds: the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board.
We have zero tolerance for terrorists. We must also see that these agencies start enforcing means and methods to make zero tolerance for human error and mechanical failure.
In trying to defend voters from being forced to produce the identification required of flyers--a sometimes difficult task for some low income people and non-driving senior citizens--I have said that voting is a fundamental right (a legal term with precise meanings from many, many court decisions) and flying is not.
But flying is important to many tens of millions of Americans, and the recent Comair tragedy indicates that it still is not safe enough.