I’m not referring to the no fly list or the TSA watchlist.  Instead there is another, trouble-maker, list being kept by the TSA.  Apparently people causing “trouble” at security checkpoints in USA, or even those who witness incidents are being logged and monitored in this list (source USA Today). 

This, well, troubling for the great potential for abuse of power and loss of rights. So far, if the report of 240 logged incidents are correct, this potential abuse by screeners/officers probably hasn’t occurred.

What isn’t (yet) obvious is what is done with the information. Do people on the list get added to the no fly list or watchlist? Do they get SSSS’ed for extra screening every time they try to fly?

There has been a recent change to the security rules for people travelling to USA. In the aftermath of the underpants bomber last December a number of security rules were imposed on people flying to USA.

1) most passengers from all countries flying to USA have to undergo additional screening at the gate

2) all people flying from 14 listed countries directly to USA have had to undergo extra special screening

The latest development is to replace (2) above with a profiling element. Now, travelers will not only have to contend with the prospect of false positives on no fly and watchlist but additionally the lottery of possibly having the same profile as someone who is a suspected terrorist on a third, as yet unnamed, list. If a suspected terrorist is a young white male then, guess what, lots of young white males will get extra attention at security worldwide before they board flights to USA.

Now all the bad guys have to do is recruit people of all main races, ages, gender and ethnicity and voila – extra special security for everyone.

So far, not much attention has been paid to one implication of the new profiling. Namely, an admission that name matches do not provide security. Unfortunately they haven’t taken the next logical step of getting rid of the watchlist with tens of millions of false positives.

According to Congressman Duncan US federal air marshals are more likely to be arrested than make an arrest.

“Actually, there have been many more arrests of Federal air marshals than that story reported, quite a few for felony offenses. In fact, more air marshals have been arrested than the number of people arrested by air marshals.

We now have approximately 4,000 in the Federal Air Marshals Service, yet they have made an average of just 4.2 arrests a year since 2001. This comes out to an average of about one arrest a year per 1,000 employees.

Now, let me make that clear. Their thousands of employees are not making one arrest per year each. They are averaging slightly over four arrests each year by the entire agency. In other words, we are spending approximately $200 million per arrest. Let me repeat that: we are spending approximately $200 million per arrest.”

With each FAM (Federal Air Marshal) flying 900 hours a year, this is one arrest per almost a million flight hours at a cost of around $200 per hour! 

I agree with the Congressman – FAMs are a terrible waste of money and completely ineffectual and unproductive as a security measure.

Forbes has a great article on the hidden cost of security – namely about the lost productivity due to airport security.  While you can easily argue about their estimate of a cost in USA alone of US$20-30 billion a year, the main point is clear and one I agree with.

There is a large cost of current flight security measures and there really should be greater emphasis on the costs versus benefits of any new or amended security measures before they are introduced or whenever they are up for review.

For more on this line of thinking, check out Schneier on Security.

Another day, another report that someone making a joke at an airport gets into trouble. This time it was an Australian visiting Hamilton airport (source NZ Herald), who was arresting for joking about a bomb in his temporarily unattended bag and who also lost a Swiss army knife in the process.

I can’t help thinking there must be more to the story.

With so few jet flights, Hamilton does not have a lot of airport security (in NZ passengers flying prop aircraft do not need to clear security). Indeed on this particular day only the 6am departure to Sydney warranted screening.

Airport security staff in NZ, whilst being professional, generally have a great sense of humour.

The article refers to the man arriving from Sydney and the alarm being raised just before 8am. The Sydney flight arrives at 12:20am. While it is possible to remain in the terminal until morning, it is neither comfortable (see my sleeping in Hamilton airport post from 18 months ago) nor commonplace – when an airport shuts down most people do not want to be “locked in”.

The airport would have been noisy by about 4am at the latest and transport options into town would have been available for some hours by 8am. The airport doesn’t have much facilities – a cafe, newsagent and toilets. So there was no apparent need to be hanging around for an extended period.

Why was the Swiss army knife confiscated? Since the man was landside there shouldn’t have been any issue in having one in his bag. Did the security staff think it would be used against them?

In summary, while on the surface this seems like just another bomb joke incident, there are aspects which do not add up.

This week I did a guest article on IndieTravelPodcast about increased security hassles in the aftermath of the underpants bomber.

Musings of the Global Traveller
Thoughts, advice and travel news from around the world by a seasoned frequent flyer.

Today’s TSA blog post is on the topic of recent media attention (eg NY Times) – children getting extra security attention because they match a name on the watchlist.

The TSA post says correctly the children are not on the watchlist but are caught due to having similar names, but then goes on to say SecureFlight will solve all once it is fully in place. (SecureFlight it has been partially rolled out.)

This completely misses the point. As I posted back in mid 2008, the watchlist catches many innocent people – with several million false matches. Since then the lists have gotten bigger – eg this Congressional Report in the wake of the Dec 25 underpants bomb attempt cites 540,000 names, apparently as at August 2008 (with a subset on the no fly list). A list with half a million names equates to tens of millions of false matches. Needless to say, this crude method of having a huge trawl-net of names to watch out for is completely ineffective as a means of security.

By devoting more resources to SecureFlight in an attempt to reduce the impact of false positive matches, TSA is in my view worsening security. The money could be much better spent on other true security initiatives. Indeed culling the watchlist would save a fortune too.

Musings of the Global Traveller
Thoughts, advice and travel news from around the world by a seasoned frequent flyer.

The past couple of weeks have had lots of security incidents and news, and yet curiously the TSA blog has been largely silent with their last posting well over a week ago.

Surely a period when we have had the following incidents (and more) is a time for more information and PR in order to reassure the travelling public, and not a time to shut up?

• Underpants bomber failed attempt.
• Temporary new security rules (last hour of flight remain in seat with no IFE and no items in your lap).
• Another suspected terrorist (the next day) spent “too long” in the lavatory because he had food poisoning and not because he was concocting a bomb.
• Botched attempt to find source of documents on the new security rules by subpoena’ing 2 bloggers (Chris Elliott and Steven Frischling) who published the widely disseminated documents.
• Apparently permanent new security rules (pat down and bag search for all passengers flying from other countries to USA).
• Newark terminal shut-down where security failed to spot someone bypassing security by entering an exit door until hours later.
• Honey being mistaken for an explosives device shutting down a Californian airport.

It has been a bad couple of weeks for TSA. I’m shocked at the lack of care in the incidents, but also at the lack of appropriate treatment in communicating well with travellers.

Musings of the Global Traveller
Thoughts, advice and travel news from around the world by a seasoned frequent flyer.

Several days ago I posted some ideas about having a backup plan in case of flight misconnections, using my own potential misconnect as an example. At the time I wrote it I was comfortable the risk was both low and could be mitigated easily.

In the event there was a circumstance which I hadn’t factored in, because it is so unusual. In transferring between these two flights I had to clear immigration and customs, go landside to check in for my onward flight, and go back through security to board. Unfortunately for me, at midnight 1 January the immigration computers went down. My flight landed after midnight and I joined a queue of at least 1500 people.

With the computers down processing was incredibly slow and it looked like it might take 6 hours to clear immigration. This would mean not only would I miss my flight, but by the time I’d arrive at the check in counters the staff would have all gone (the last flight for many hours on that airline having long departed) and so the backup options of rebooking would also be difficult to apply.

When I realised this I found someone official looking and enlisted their assistance. I was polite, clearly explained the situation, and left it to him to find a solution. I picked the right person and the right time to ask because he assisted me to jump the queue – passing several hundreds of travelers ahead of me. If he hadn’t been able to help I would have tried other people – even to the extent of going backwards up the queue to find a police officer if necessary. It was a close call – by the time I cleared immigration and customs and reached check in it was only 15 minutes before departure – but I made it.

If I hadn’t asked but instead had just waited patiently in the queue until it was my turn, I definitely would have missed the flights that were my original backup plan. I might not have been able to fly on the next flight options over 12 hours later (these were full although my frequent flyer status would have put me at the top of the queue in case of no shows), and I certainly would have missed other onward flights on my itineray, requiring further rebooking of flights.

What are the lessons I learned?

1) Be prepared. By having all the facts about onward flights I knew what my options were and were not. Even while it was tense waiting in line I knew if I was still okay or not. Knowing is better than not knowing.

2) Being aware of time limitations. I knew when the check in staff would be finishing up, so could wait patiently while there was still time but act differently when I needed to.

3) Enlisting help. Instead of just accepting a misconnection I enlisted others to help me out.

It is not the first time I’ve been in this situation, and I doubt it will be the last time. By being prepared I was able to be proactive instead of reactive, which lead to a much better outcome for me.

Musings of the Global Traveller
Thoughts, advice and travel news from around the world by a seasoned frequent flyer.

Many readers of this blog or my trip reports on Flyer Talk (eg this trip report) know I spend a fair bit of time preparing for the possibility of things going wrong with flights. Not matter how well prepared there is always a chance of the unexpected causing a flight misconnection or to miss a meeting – be it stormy weather, airline schedule changes, aircraft maintenance issues, new security rules, hold ups for VIPs to arrive or airshows to take place, and so on.

Today I have such a potential issue to deal with and am taking a few minutes out of my busy day to prepare myself as well as I can. When I booked this trip many months ago, a connection I have later today seemed more than reasonable with an acceptably low risk of misconnection. However, heightened security and immigration checks following the underpants bomber incident the other day means I now have a higher risk of not making the onward flight. It is not certain that I will misconnect, but the chance is higher than my threshold for comfort and worry-free travel.

So there are a few steps I’m taking now to mitigate the risks.

1) Consider if it really matters if I misconnect? If it isn’t too important then I should stop worrying and do more fun &/or productive things instead.

Unfortunately for me, misconnecting here will cause significant inconvenience.

2) Try to check in for the onward flight. If already checked in this reduces the risk of misconnection in two ways. First, I save time from not needing to go to check in at the transfer airport (with a likely struggle to meet check in deadlines) and instead can go directly through security to the departure gate. Secondly, the airline operating the second flight is more likely to hold the flight a few minutes if necessary so I can board if I am already checked in than hold it for a longer time if I am not already checked in.

Unfortunately for me, I have not been successful in checking in for the onward flight.

3) See if other flight options are available.

Using availability tools (like seatcounter.com) I see there are several possible solutions if I misconnect. I could be rerouted and there are a couple of flights with spare seats operated by the same airline that still get me where I need to go in time for when I need to be there, and most crucially depart an hour later than the flight I’m booked on. Or, I could be moved to one of 2 other airlines that operate this particular route, both of which have later flights with spare seats. Both of these solutions depend on the goodwill of the airline which I’m booked on.

A misconnect would only occur for reasons outside my control (I haven’t just arrived at the airport late due to sleeping in). I am travelling on an expensive ticket. I have high frequent flyer status with the alliance the airline is a member of. So, I think the odds are good that they would accommodate me on one of those options if needed.

4) Consider whether to be proactive or reactive. I have a choice to make – take the flight I am booked on and hope to make the onward connection, or change my flights to a less risky alternative? The change option requires either flexible tickets with the alternative being within the ticket fare rules, or acceptance by the airline that the risk of misconnection is high enough to warrant a proactive change.

In my case today, a misconnection is not sure enough for the airline to volunteer to make changes proactively. However, I do have flexible ticket and so could reroute (but not switch to the other airlines flying the same route as this is not within the fare rules and thus not allowed as a voluntary change). I’ve decided not to reroute voluntarily because it does not seem necessary in my circumstance – I’ll either make the onward flight (most likely outcome in my view) or the airline will satisfactorily resolve a misconnection (quite likely in my view). Being stranded seems fairly unlikely, based on current information I have and I am lucky enough to be in a position to be relatively well informed of any late developments. (This isn’t always the case. Many times I’ve been travelling a complicated itinerary when something has gone wrong and had to make decisions based on little information, and more importantly try to convince airlines to make changes on the fly at the same time.)

5) Keep an eye open for changes to the situation. There may be things between now and boarding of my next flight that changes the situation. For example if the flight is significantly delayed then the risk of misconnection becomes much greater and the airline may be willing to reroute or rebook of their accord. One way I can keep appraised is to check flightstats.com, as well as watching departure screens (if accessible) and news websites for any major change to security rules.

Musings of the Global Traveller
Thoughts, advice and travel news from around the world by a seasoned frequent flyer.