COMMENT
Written on EZ3866 flying Amsterdam to London Stansted and dispatched to silicon.com from London Heathrow via wi-fi.
Along with an aircraft full of people at Schipol, I have just stowed my luggage in the overhead, got seated and settled in, ready to fly back to the UK. But a passenger has just been found smoking in the toilets! The fun has started - he has just been informed that he has committed a criminal offence, he is crying, his girlfriend is upset, other passengers are taking photographs, some even find it amusing.
I don't, and neither do the crew. Safety procedures are being followed and the determined process of ejecting both passengers from the aircraft is underway. How stupid can people be?
The flight from Amsterdam to London Stansted is only 30 minutes long; there are signs and announcements enough to warn people about smoking all over the airport and the aircraft. What was he thinking? Or was he thinking at all! Anyway he is being escorted from the aircraft and the search for his baggage and belongings begins. Did he board at the front or the back? Did he plant something in the overhead or in the toilet, is he a potential bomber or is he just stupid?
As I flew out of Boston the day before 9/11, and passed through all of the London bomb-sites on 7/7 some twenty-six hours before the attacks, I have this worrying feeling that I may be on a converging disaster timeline. The miscreant has the complexion, dress and look of a potential bomber. All the archetypal patterns are kicking in and I'm definitely feeling a bit worried.
The flight crew is pretty sure he boarded at the back, so they start pulling all the bags down from the overheads and asking all the passengers to identify their luggage an item at a time. This takes some considerable time and involves about 30 per cent of the aircraft, and in my mind are questions about the remaining 70 per cent and whether the smoking passenger was very stupid or very clever. On balance I think everyone comes down on the side of stupid! But what a ruse, how easy a mechanism if he did indeed want to plant a bomb or some other weapon.
Eventually we roll out onto the runway over an hour late, and 30 minutes later we are at Stansted - all safe and sound - phew! On the flight I started musing over the problem and it occurred to me that whilst I cannot carry a knife or firearm onto the plane, I can carry a box of matches and/or a lighter. I can also purchase a bottle of whisky from duty free, plus of course flammable clothing and other materials. I'm sure you get the idea! Seems to me all means of ignition should be banned on all flights if we are really serious about aircraft safety.
At this point the obvious struck me - we need to roll out RFID even faster than planned, and not just for passports and documentation but for all bags and clothing, purchases and belongings. I'm not sure what happened to the miscreant after we took off but when he was first apprehended I would have favoured a public stoning on the runway, biblical style!
Yet on reflection, I admit English, Dutch, French and German were not his first languages. He may have been a first-time flyer; or just plain exhausted. The security check-in never asked for the declaration, or looked for, flammables directly. For sure cigarettes, cigars, lighters and matches are hard to spot using today's scanners, and thoroughly searching every passenger and their baggage isn't feasible.
There is one other measure that would be very easy in the interim, though. Stop treating all passengers the same. Look for and search out the first-time and occasional flyers, identify those with limited language skills, focus more energy on the likely suspects and people more inclined to err for whatever reason. All the data is available, it ain't rocket science, it's just databases and (un)common sense.
I'm now at T4 Heathrow waiting to board for Washington on an aircraft that is twice the size with even more potential for such incidents! Hopefully my converging timeline theory is wrong!
Comments
There are 11 comments. Join the discussion
1. Jeffrey
Stupid! because smoking is stupid. We've known that for 50 years.
Stop selling tobacco and matches at airports. Don't allow smoking anywhere in an airport. Make it an offence to have matches or lighters in your possession in an airport.
Smokers are more likely to take drugs - so if you ban smokers, you disrupt the drugs traffic!
However, there are other ways to cause ignition, and other ways to get chucked off an aircraft - so how far do you go?
2. Julian Bennett
At least he didn't try to open the dooor to have a cigarette as a french woman did on the way to Australia the other day! She was spotted by an attendant before disaster struck, but just shows that you can't guard against every eventuality
3. Marty Whitby
If you passed through all of the London bomb sites six hours before then you were there at 3am in the morning.
Therefore you weren't on the Tube at that time as it is not open 24 hours a day but near the vicinity at best. What is this point of mentioning this in the article?
[Ed. note: You've spotted a typo. It should be "some twenty-six hours before the attacks". The story has now been changed to reflect this.]
4. Richard
Having not flown for ten years and having never smoked:
Why such an over-reaction from the authorities? Wouldn't summary justice, like being forced to eat an airline meal, have been more appropriate, safer and less disruptive?
Too often, officials treat all ordinary people as potential threats, increasing risks and making matters worse.
Common sense is more effective (but rarer) than new, expensive technological fixes.
5. anonymous
Stop treating all passengers the same.. identify those with limited language skills... focus more energy on the likely suspects..???
This may well sound like common sense, but when our police forces dare to suggest something similar they find themselves in the dock accused of racial, ethnic and every other form of discrimination. For good reason too.
While the arguements for this approach are that if one life is saved then its worth doing, the contrary view is that it serves to further alienate groups within our society that neither deserve nor can adequately stand up to such indiscriminate discrimination. Chicken vs Egg?
6. ANON
Jeffrey from London is talking out of his backside when he says smokers are more likely to take drugs, what rubbish , most people I know who take drugs are actually NON SMOKERS !
7. Simon Allen
I'm not sure that barring all falammable materials will work, for there is ALWAYS another weapon to hand.
You mention the litre bottle of spirits (which the airline will so kindly bring on board for you!) and is better for slashing than for igniting. However, there is another weapon that I would choose. You had this weapon with you and, indeed, were using it on this flight!
Your laptop weighs a goodly amount. I do not know what a MAC book weighs but some Dells can be 2Kg. If that were to be smashed across the back of a person's head - or their face - then it will do more damage than a simple blade.
So, we cannot make airlien travel 'safe' any more. We have to adjust.
8. vic hansen
So smoking is now a security issue? I can still remember smoking areas on planes and I don't think that planes are any more liable to catch fire now than they were. You have just described the sledgehammer / nut syndrome of bureaucracy gone mad.
Let the punishment fit the crime. Conficate his cigarettes, sit him next to you for the duration and get on with the flight.
9. anonymous
I'm afraid what Peter suggests in his last but one paragraph (focus on the likely) will not come to pass, because it reuires the exercise of judgment rather than ticking a box ( and thus risking a mistake), and would provoke howls of "victimisation" - something none of the politicians or civil servants can stand up to.
Besides the massive and, as PC points out, mostly useless security operation feed egos, provides jobs, and enables the politicians to persuade the dim majority that "something is being done"
10. Peter Cochrane
Whoops typo - well spotted - no idea how that slipped through - I'll correct the text. I went through the day before which makes it around 26 hours earlier.
The only reason for mentioning 9/11 and 7/7 is that I see them as near misses that have made me more nervous/watchful. ie the point is - non of us are immune/safe.
I lost a couple of friends on 9/11, but thankfully no one, as far as I am aware, on 7/11
11. Mike
Disregarding all the signs banning smoking is not only stupid but shows an inability to obey instructions. (The prat may not have spoken English, but surely he can comprehend a pictogram!)
In an emergency, passengers need to obey instructions from the crew - if they don't they endanger everyone. The idiot should have been banned from flying permanently!
Smoking was banned in aircraft toilets even when smoking sections existed, because smokers didn't have the intelligence to put their fags out before they threw them into the (flammable) towel waste!