New rules to help fliers

New rules took effect on Tuesday that will benefit the airline passenger:

1) Passengers involuntarily bumped from oversold flights will get more compensation. Under the new rules, busmped passengers can get up to $650 if the airline can get them to their destination with one or two hours of their originally scheduled arrival time for domestic flights or up to $1300 if they are delayed longer. 

Previous limites were $400 and $800 respectively. 

The new amounts will be adjusted every two years for inflation.

2) Current rules state that any domestic flight delayed more than three hours must allow passengers to get off the plane or face fines. International flights were exempt.

Now, international flights must abide by the same rules except they area allowed up to four hours before they must comply.

Exceptions are allowed for safety, security or air traffic control-related reasons.

3) If you pay to check a piece of luggage and the airline loses your bag, it must now refund the bag fee. This is in addition to them compensating passengers for lost or damaged baggage.

(Frank II)

Nein to body scanners

The German police are not impressed:

Body scanners being tested at Germany’s Hamburg airport have had a thumbs down from the police, who say they trigger an alarm unnecessarily in seven out of 10 cases, a newspaper said Saturday.

The weekly Welt am Sonntag, quoting a police report, said 35 percent of the 730,000 passengers checked by the scanners set off the alarm more than once despite being innocent.

The report said the machines were confused by several layers of clothing, boots, zip fasteners and even pleats, while in 10 percent of cases the passenger’s posture set them off. - AFP via Google News

(Brad)

TSA Updates

Every now and then, we’ll  bring you updates to all things TSA. No, not every individual incident where someone complains but more general issues effecting all of us. 

First, the Electronic Privacy Information Center is claiming they have documents received through the Freedom of Information Act stating the Department of Homeland Security and TSA lied about studies relating to radiation exposure from body scanners. No news organization has picked up on this—at least none that I know of—and I am not familiar with EPIC. You be the judge.

http://epic.org/privacy/airtravel/backscatter/epic_v_dhs_radiation.html

Second, for a long time airports were allowed to petition the TSA to hire their own airport security personnel rather than have TSA. In late 2010, more and more airports were filing to do just that. In response, John Pistole, head of TSA, said he was putting a stop to it and no new airports would be allowed to get rid of TSA. 

Well, that has now been reversed—sort of. Airports can again apply but they must now prove, to TSA, why private screening would provide “a clear and substantial advantage to TSA’s security operations.”  Good luck with that one.

http://overheadbin.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/06/24/6933905-no-more-tsa-screeners-airports-again-allowed-to-apply-to-opt-out

(Frank II)

Bed bugs bite BA

Got a problem with an airline? Don’t bother writing a letter. Do what others have done—go public on the internet.

First, there was the guy who wrote a song and put up a video on Youtube on why United Breaks Guitars.

Then actor/director Kevin Smith went ballistic on twitter when he was bounced off a Southwest flight for being too big.

And now a Los Angeles woman has started a website, www.ba-bites.com  claiming she was bitten by bedbugs on not one but two separate BA flights.

 If Andy Warhol is looking down I have only one thing to say to him: It’s a lot easier now to get your 15 minutes of fame. 

For the entire BA-bedbug story, click here. You may have to register on the site but it’s free.

(Frank II)

Update on February 25, 2011 by Frank@OBOW

Once point of interest…”Snakes on a Plane” was a movie. It didn’t really happen. 

Update on March 1, 2011 by Frank@OBOW

British Airways is admitting that it found bedbugs on one of its planes and has taken it as well as another out of service for fumigation. 

Apparently, both of the planes were the ones flown by the woman who put up the website about bedbugs on her BA flights. 

Pol takes ferry home after refusing TSA pat down.

Alaska State Representative Sharon Cissna was scheduled to fly from Seattle on Sunday, where she was receiving medical treatment, to her home in Juneau.

She had already gone through a body scan at SeaTac when she was told she’d have to have a pat down because they could see she had a mastectomy. She refused.

Instead she decided to skip the idea of flying and take the ferry instead.

No word from either TSA or the pol’s offce as to why a mastectomy would be the reason for a pat down.

(Frank II)

Update on February 24, 2011 by Frank@OBOW

After four days, she finally made it home. Her trip took the following route:

She rented a car in Seattle and drove over the border to a small airport outside Vancouver. From there she took a small plane to Prince Rupert, BC. Then, a two day ferry trip to Juneau.  Taxis also helped along the way. 

New 747 unveiled

Boeing introduced the new 747-8 “Intercontinental” over the weekend in Everett, WA.

This new version of the 747 is longer than any ofther commercial airplane flying today, it’s tell tale “hump” has been extended 13 feet, it has a new upward sweep wing design, has larger windows, will seat more passengers, and is more energy efficient. Blah, blah, blah.

That’s all fine and dandy, but what about the important stuff to one baggers. Well, according to Boeing, the overhead storage bins have been reconfigured to hold more bags than before. I couldn’t find any specifics.

This also marks the first time a new Boeing airplane was introduced in colors other than “Boeing blue.” This Intercontinental had bright red and yellow paint which, according to Boeing, means “prosperity, fortune and the promise of success” in some cultures.  Considering the exact plane shown is one of eight going to an unnamed VIP customer, the guess is to somewhere in either southeast Asia or India.

BTW, the first 747 was introduced over 40 years ago. How time flies.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

New Year, new call to ditch TSA

More talk of airports opting out of the TSA security regimen/regime:

Rep. John L. Mica (R-Fla.), the incoming chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, has written to 200 of the nation’s largest airports, urging them to consider switching to private companies.

The TSA was “never intended to be an army of 67,000 employees,” he said.

“If you look at [the TSA’s] performance, have they ever stopped a terrorist? Anyone can get through,” Mica said in an interview. “We’ve been very lucky, very fortunate. TSA should focus on its mission: setting up the protocol, adapting to the changing threats and gathering intelligence.” -  WaPo

(Brad)

iPad vs. TSA

The power of information (technology) keeps a mom from losing her baby’s food:

Iseri asked to see the TSA’s baby-food rules and also, where they got the authority to open her jars. An agent told her, “That’s not public information.”

She whipped out her iPad and pulled up the TSA site, which said,

[G]reater than 3 ounces of baby formula, breast milk, or juice are permitted through the security checkpoint in reasonable quantities for the duration of your itinerary. - Consumer Traveler

Update on December 1, 2010 by Frank@OBOW

TSA vs. another mom:

The latest case of TSA tyranny to hit the headlines comes in the form of a young mother who was subjected to enhanced groping and then shut inside a screening box for almost an hour by agents after she refused to allow them to put her breast milk through an x-ray device, a legitimate request that is even written into the TSA’s own guidelines. - Prison Planet

(Brad)

Predictably predictable

The following sounds wise to me. Unfortunately, the US majors on the cookie cutter.

“There has to be an element of not being sure what security you are being subjected to. Most attacks on aviation are well reconnaissanced and well planned. If you have a consistent security system around the globe it is quite easy to reconnoitre that and predict it.”

Mr Hutcheson was speaking ahead of a security conference by the International Civil Aviation Organisation, a UN body, in Geneva.

He has backed more sophisticated techniques including “behavioural detection” which has already been tested by BAA at its six airports: Heathrow, Stansted, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Stansted.

This has seen key BAA staff trained to look out for unusual behaviour by passengers while they are waiting for a flight in the airport terminal.

Mr Hutcheson wants airports to be given greater freedom to draw up their own security arrangements. - telegraph.co.uk

(Brad)

Update on November 29, 2010 by Frank@OBOW

Drudge Fought the TSA…and Drudge Won?

Shiny, happy people

The TSA Minitruth says it’s all good.

Update on November 26, 2010 by Frank@OBOW

Doc says scanners more dangerous than advertised.

A wee protest

Skirting the issue:

A loosely organized effort dubbed National Opt-Out Day plans to use flyers, T-shirts and, in one case, a Scottish kilt to highlight what some call unnecessarily intrusive security screenings. Others feared holdups: More than 40 million people plan to travel over the Thanksgiving holiday, according to AAA, with just more than 1.6 million flying — a 3.5 percent increase in fliers from last year…

Robert Shofkom wasn’t too worried about delayed flights, maybe just strong breezes.

The 43-year-old from Georgetown, Texas, said he planned for weeks to wear a traditional kilt — sans skivvies — to display his outrage over body scanners and aggressive pat-downs while catching his Wednesday flight out of Austin.

Travel psychology, coping strategies

OBOW reader Guy Winch writes at Psychology Today:

Tensions are always high over peak travel times and I doubt there will be much holiday joy emanating from security lines this year, regardless of their screening methods. We tend to be much less annoyed in such situations if we anticipate them in advance. Therefore, be prepared for long lines at check-in, security and even boarding and prepare children as well, so they too can adjust their expectations accordingly. At best you’ll all be pleasantly surprised. - PT’s Squeaky Wheel blog (How to complain the right way)

Preparation and management of expectations are among the reasons OBOW often focuses (to the irritation of some) on the security follies. Our reporting bad news (negativity?) is not meant to encourage disrespectful behavior or anger. A good attitude is especially helpful in bad times. Get mad when you read about the latest outrage, maybe — but leave the anger at home. 

Flying like a turkey

One of the best travel writers, Scott McCartney of the Wall Street Journal, offers this excellent preview of Thanksgiving travel:

The fear is that Thanksgiving travelers—many of them students, families and older people who fly once or twice a year—will be unfamiliar with TSA procedures and slow to get through checkpoints. Full-body scanners require removal of wallets, belts, jewelry and everything inside pockets.

“With people getting partially molested at checkpoints, all that is going to be a real shock for them,” said Greg Wells, senior vice president of operations at Southwest Airlines. “TSA will create an issue for us. It’s going to slow things down.”

Southwest will have employees with walkie-talkies at checkpoints to hold airplane departures if passengers are stuck in long lines. - WSJ.com’s Middle Seat

Kudos to Southwest for planning ahead. Here’s hoping all your holiday flights are more graceful than a turkey.

Submit or pay

TSA Generalissimo Pistole implied he may cave on frisking flight crews. No such luck for Joe and Judy Citizen though:

However, Pistole did nothing to address similar measures being directed against the traveling public which amount to little less than sexual molestation, and had no answer to why airport officials are threatening people who refused to be groped with $10,000 dollar fines, as in the case of a man who had a run in with TSA goons at San Diego International Airport this past weekend.

Despite the TSA’s blanket refusal to amend measures that are stoking outrage across the country and leading many to decide against flying until changes are made, this first step in the feds being forced to back down on one level is obviously a sign of progress. - prisonplanet.com

(Brad)

Update on November 15, 2010 by Frank@OBOW

There’s an app for that. No kidding the TSA has its own app:

MyTSA has multiple functions, including the following tools:

• Airport Status: Users can see what airports are experiencing general delays (not flight specific) or search for conditions at a specific airport. This information is provided by the FAA.
• ‘Can I Bring?’: Users can type in an item they plan to bring on a trip to find out if it is permitted or prohibited, and whether they can pack it in carry-on or checked bags.
• Guide: Users can get travel tips on an array of some of the most popular topics of air travel, including traveling with children, 3-1-1 rules for liquids, gels and aerosols, special medical needs, packing tips, tips for how to dress for airport security, tips for military members, and traveling with food and gifts.
• Security wait times: MyTSA gives passengers the ability to share their wait time and see what wait times other passengers have posted for U.S. airports.
• Wait Times: Passengers can also post the approximate amount of time it took them to get through security for other travelers to view.

To get MyTSA on your mobile device, type in www.tsa.gov/mobile.

You can find the MyTSA iPhone app on iTunes.

Abolish the TSA

Bipartisan support should be immediate.  For fiscal conservatives, it’s hard to come up with a more wasteful agency than the TSA.  For privacy advocates, eliminating an organization that requires you to choose between a nude body scan or genital groping in order to board a plane should be a no-brainer.

But won’t that compromise safety?  I doubt it.  The airlines have enormous sums of money riding on passenger safety, and the notion that a government bureaucracy has better incentives to provide safe travels than airlines with billions of dollars worth of capital and goodwill on the line strains credibility.  This might be beside the point: in 2003, William Anderson incisively argued that some of the steps that airlines (and passengers) would have needed to take to prevent the 9/11 disaster probably would have been illegal. - forbes.com

And the question is being asked — is all this dissuading people from flying? Of course it is. I know people who have said “Never again!” A co-worker of mine nearly passed up free accommodations on St. Maarten just because he was afraid he couldn’t tolerate the security scan/grope.

Vote here.

(Brad)

Update on November 15, 2010 by Frank@OBOW

And why does OBOW so often focus on “travel insecurity” news? Because our readers are likely to be frequent, serious travelers who make a great deal of effort to travel efficiently - just the type to be most affected and vexed by security theater. Avoiding checked luggage used to be the ticket to travel bliss. The checkpoint hassle has greatly offset this. Knowledge (about the security protocols) should equal power. Alas, all are powerless before the big blue monster. 

Update on November 15, 2010 by Frank@OBOW

Skivvie-il disobedience (no nudity, only the scanner operators get to see that)

Update on November 15, 2010 by Frank@OBOW

And behind every fetid, corrupt, stupid, Washington-hatched fiasco you’ll find — surprise, surprise — a bi-partisan cabal of lobbyists. 

Resistance: National Opt-Out Day

The wave of resistance to the TSA’s latest invasive “security” measures is growing. National Opt-Out Day is the latest sign. Some say Matt Drudge is stirring the pot. I say the facts on ground are sufficient to create outrage with no incitement necessary.

A major lawsuit is also in the works.

(Brad)

Update on November 11, 2010 by Frank@OBOW

From http://www.optoutday.com/:

How?

    By saying “I opt out” when told to go through the bodying imaging machines and submitting to a pat down.  Also, be sure to have your pat down by TSA in full public - do not go to the back room when asked.  Every citizen must see for themselves how the government treats law-abiding citizens.

follow us on twitter:  http://twitter.com/nationaloptout

 

For more information on these machines and to read stories of what happens when you use the naked body scanners or opt out, please visit:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-safety-security-222/

http://www.dontscan.me/

http://www.thousandsstandingaround.org/

To file an incident report, use the Electronic Privacy Information Center’s site:

http://epic.org/bodyscanner/incident_report/

Update on November 11, 2010 by Frank@OBOW

Update on November 11, 2010 by Frank@OBOW

The story KLW refers to in his comment below:

TSA's bad (normal) PR day

Today’s headlines are:

“TSA Groping Out Of Control”

“World’s Pilots Reject Naked Body Scanners Over Radiation Danger, Privacy Breach”

(Brad)

Update on November 8, 2010 by Frank@OBOW

Mmmm….no you’re not. (Old news, still maddening)

"TSA Fondles Women & Children"

That’s the headline. I call that bad press for the boys and girls in blue.

(Brad)

Update on November 5, 2010 by Frank@OBOW

Update on November 5, 2010 by Frank@OBOW

Joe Sharkey of the New York Times on the perils of “opting out.”

“Opt out! We got an opt out!” one bellowed about me in a tone that people in my desert neighborhood in Tucson usually reserve for declaring, “Rattlesnake!”

Other screeners took up the “Opt out!” shout. I was marched from the metal detector lane to one of those nearby whole-body imagers, ordered to take everything out of my pockets, remove my belt and hold my possessions up high. Then I was required to stand still while I received a rough pat-down by a man whose résumé, I suspected, included experience at a state prison.

“Hold your pants up!” he ordered me.

What did I do to deserve this? Well, as I approached the checkpoints, I had two choices. One was a familiar lane with the metal detector, so I put my bag on that. To my right was a separate lane dominated with what the Transportation Security Administration initially called “whole-body imagers” but has now labeled “advanced imaging technology” units. Critics, of course, call them strip-search machines. - read more

(Brad)

Toner "bomb" aftermath

Patting you down because someone in Yemen ships an apparent bomb doesn’t make sense. And everyone knows this. And nobody in the US or the UK security apparatuses cares.  Most OBOW readers in the UK are probably not fans of Peter (brother of Christopher) Hitchens, but he does state the truth about the latest…whatever it was….pretty plainly:

What, precisely, are these ‘hallmarks of Al Qaeda’ that we are constantly being told that such things have? How are they distinguished from the hallmarks of all terror organisations?

How powerful would they have been if they had detonated, assuming they could have been? And what on earth do they have to do with the ludicrous persecution of airline passengers, as apparently suggested by former Home Secretary and Defence Secretary  and one-time Communist John ‘without a shot being fired’ Reid, who said this was a ‘cautionary tale’ for those who ‘want to reduce essential security measures.’

‘Doctor’ Reid added that these measures might be inconvenient for passengers but were nothing  compared with the ‘tragic consequences  of loss of life’ caused by a terrorist attack.

While true, this is a classic nonsequitur. ‘Doctor’ Reid has to show how these measures would have prevented such deaths. If he tried to do so, it would quickly emerge that most of them were not in fact essential. - Daily Mail (UK)

I love a good “cautionary tale.” Our governments are great at telling tales.

Update on November 1, 2010 by Frank@OBOW

Update on November 1, 2010 by Frank@OBOW

TSA statement:

“TSA is in the process of implementing new pat-down procedures at checkpoints nationwide as one of our many layers of security to keep the traveling public safe. Pat-downs are one important tool to help TSA detect hidden and dangerous items such as explosives. Passengers should continue to expect an unpredictable mix of security layers that include explosives trace detection, advanced imaging technology, canine teams, among others.”

Unpredictable mix. Thought that had been around for awhile. I can think of other adjectives for the TSA’s “mix.”

Obvious to all the world

US travel “security” measures are a worldwide embarrassment and irritant:

European air officials accused the United States of imposing useless and overly intrusive travel security measures, calling Wednesday for the Obama administration to reexamine policies ranging from online security checks to X-raying shoes.

British Airways’ chairman made the first in a wave of complaints, saying in a speech to airport operators that removing shoes and taking laptops out of bags were “completely redundant” measures demanded by the U.S.

He was joined less than 24 hours later by British pilots, the owner of Heathrow airport, other European airlines, and the European Union. The EU submitted formal objections to a program that requires U.S.-bound travelers from 35 nations to complete online security clearance before departure. It called the system burdensome and said it could violate travelers’ privacy. - ABC News

Now that I think about it, “OBLIVIOUS to all the world” would have made a good headline too.

Update on October 28, 2010 by Frank@OBOW