Thursday, August 1, 2013

Fear of Flying

 
 


"Excuse me miss - is anyone flying this plane?"
 
 
Believe it or not, this is not a story about flying - well, it sort of is. It is the story of what happens to us prior to getting on the plane. You guessed it - it is about the government organization we all love to hate - the TSA.

In my working days, I logged quite a few miles in the air. I made the "million mile club" with NWA, and have flown many times on such former airlines such as Western, Eastern, Braniff, and TWA. You name the airline, and I have probably flown on it at least once, either domestically or overseas.

On to the TSA. Many think the worst thing to come out of the 2001 terror attacks was the Patriot Act. I disagree. I think the worst thing to come out of 2001 was the TSA. Now a part of Homeland Security, their primary function is to keep the flying public safe. In reality, it is nothing more than a low paying, "make work" program for the Feds. I have run into some of the laziest, most "un-smart" people in the Federal Government working the gates at some of our airports. Truthfully - the worst airport (in my opinion) by far is Reagan (National) in WDC.

The only people who are excited about how hosed up the TSA is the DMV and the USPO. Those two examples of government inefficiency actually look pretty good when compared to the TSA.

The latest revelation about the TSA comes as a surprise to practically nobody. Yesterday, CNN reported the following:

A new report from the Government Accountability Office released in July 2013 says misconduct by Transportation Security Administration workers has increased more than 26% in the last three years, with more than 9,000 cases of misconduct documented. More than 1,900 of the incidents were deemed significant enough to be possible security threats. Some of the most serious violations include: Employees sleeping on the job, letting family and friends go without being screened, leaving work without permission and stealing.

So besides having a history of groping and voyeurism at security checkpoints, we can also add sleeping on the job, stealing, drug usage, dereliction of duty, leaving assigned post, and so on. Out of the tens of thousands of people employed by the TSA, very few have been fired. Some suspended, some given letters of reprimand, others nothing. In the real world, infractions such as this would result in being fired for cause - immediately.

This article is appropriately called Fear of Flying. Do I have a fear of flying? No. I do however, have a great and growing fear of getting past the inefficiency of TSA to get on an airplane.

No comments:

Post a Comment