Friday, September 8, 2006
Column
Flights of antsy:
Airport security measures must show that the benefits outweigh the costs; the
latest restrictions are increasing stress and make no sense
By Dan
Gardner
Canada - The Ottawa Citizen
As I write, I am unshaven,
bleary eyed and dressed like someone who spends a great deal of time searching
gutters for cigarette butts. I share this state of degradation with the reader
not in hopes of cultivating sympathy -- though I am sufficiently pathetic at the
moment to deserve a pinch on the cheek and a cup of tea -- but because this
miserable state was inflicted by something that threatens any person who travels
today: ludicrous security measures at international airports and the irrational
fear of terrorism that inspires them.
This tale of woe began in the land
of Hamlet, the melancholy Dane with thoughts of suicide I understand better this
week than last. My itinerary -- a short flight from Copenhagen to London's
Heathrow airport and an Air Canada flight to Ottawa -- was routine.
Of
course I had heard about the strict new drill imposed at Heathrow following the
revelation last month of a plot to bomb jets leaving the airport using liquid
explosives. As in Canada and the United States, liquids, gels and pastes are no
longer allowed in carry-on baggage. Heathrow also restricts passengers to one
bag that can be no larger than a briefcase, and this restriction applies even to
passengers simply making a connecting flight at the airport.
I knew all
this in advance, so I wasn't surprised when I bumped into the line for security
screening. What did shock me was the size of the line: With three or four people
abreast, the queue ran the length of one of Heathrow's long halls and
disappeared around a corner.
Several staff walked hurriedly beside the
queue, pulling aside grandmothers with stuffed shopping bags and businessmen
with the little suitcases that used to be allowed and told them their bags were
too big, they had to be checked in, just walk back a kilometre or two and find
the correct office somewhere in the vastness of the parallel universe that is
Heathrow. Then return to the back of the line.
Arguments broke out. An
old woman who knew a half-dozen words of English looked confused and started to
cry. The officials delivering the bad news were polite but the strain showed in
their flushed, sweating faces.
Time and the line crawled forward.
Rounding the corner, I discovered the line snaked down another long hall and
vanished to the right again.
The air grew hot and stifling. More people
were pulled aside. More arguments broke out. Still, we shuffled forward in fits
and starts, like an enormous, wounded centipede, past signs warning travellers
that threats or violence would not be tolerated.
Forty-five minutes
passed.
Passengers waiting for their flights at Terminal One in London's Heathrow Airport in early August after the new security measures were adopted at airports worldwide.
The line went round the next corner and
continued on. But in the distance, shimmering and taunting like a mirage, stood
the metal detectors.
When I finally slipped off my shoes, emptied my
pockets, had my shoulder bag rifled, and got felt up by a bored security guard
-- the second of what would be three invasions of bodily privacy that day -- I
was delighted. I was through.
Putting my shoes back on, I glanced at my
watch. My plane was leaving in four minutes.
I ran like a madman,
covering a huge distance and finding my gate in an Olympics-worthy seven
minutes. I arrived just in time to see an Air Canada employee snap at a young
woman with two children that "you're too late, the gate is closed."
I
tracked down another Air Canada employee and, while looking out the window at my
plane, I told her I thought there were quite a few people on the plane from
Copenhagen who were catching the flight to Ottawa. She said she knew that. There
were eight connecting passengers, to be precise.
So why can't you hold
the plane for five minutes?
"We don't hold up 170 people for eight," she
huffed.
Odd, I thought. I can't count the number of times I've been on a
plane that waited 15 or even 20 minutes for just one connecting passenger. But I
didn't argue because she had turned her back and walked away.
The
Ottawa-bound plane was still at the gate as the other passengers from my flight
arrived to discover that Heathrow security had successfully protected them
against in-flight terrorism.
More delights lay ahead. I booked another
route to Ottawa via Washington, D.C., but the departure was so late I was sure I
would again miss my connection. Disaster was averted when the connecting flight
was itself two hours late: This is what counts as good fortune for today's
traveller.
And, yes, my luggage vanished. I hope to see it again
someday.
My favourite moment of Kafka occurred as I shuffled past yet
another security check into a waiting room -- which we weren't allowed to leave
-- at a departure gate. There were no bathrooms or drinking fountains and a
vending machine selling bottled water had been shut off lest terrorists use it
to obtain Perrier. The guy in front of me joked to an employee that it was like
a prison.
"How can you say that?" she shot back. "They have water in
prison."
As I've written before, airport security restrictions aren't
simply inconvenient. They cause delays that inflict major economic costs. Wasted
time and aggravation also convince people to take cars instead of planes, and
that can be tragic: Driving is far riskier than flying, so switching means
people will die who would otherwise have lived.
Given all that, security
measures must show benefits that outweigh the costs. But what's the benefit of
this latest round of restrictions? No airplane has ever been brought down with
liquid explosives. Even if the alleged plot had been pulled off -- and others
were in the works -- the risk to any passenger of such an attack would still be
infinitesimal compared to the risk of being killed in a car crash or falling
down stairs or any of the thousand other risks we ignore every day. It would
even be smaller, I suspect, than the risk of a heart attack induced by the
stress of going through an airport.
I may be jetlagged and miserable, but
even I can see this makes no sense.