When Samuel L. Jackson starred in “Snakes on a Plane” in 2006, I bet he and the other passengers wished the Transportation Security Administration allowed knives.
If the movie would have come out after April 25, Jackson could fend off the snakes with a knife, as the TSA will begin allowing them on planes.
The TSA has received backlash for years over its invasive searches, stalling lines and arbitrary enforcement of regulations and standards. Now, it’s allowing small knives that meet certain requirements.
You mean requirements like the ones on various hygienic containers, and other random objects?
That’s the kind.
The invasive searches held by the TSA will escalate, and the whiplash from passengers will match it.
But to balance it out, you can now have two golf clubs fly with you.
We must have come a long way from the Sept. 11 attacks for the
TSA to be opening the doors to such a change in policy.
I’m not even opposed to small knives and tools being allowed — it’s the poor policymakers who deserve a thrashing for their inconsistent platform changes and poor timing.
Nikki Stern, a woman appalled by the recent decision, lost her husband in 9/11. Although Stern doesn’t believe his death to be from a pair of box-cutters, she doesn’t understand the TSA’s decision.
“I am aware of the argument that anything can be made into a weapon, but knives make it easy,” Stern said in an interview with CNN.
The TSA is claiming a “risk-based approach” that focuses on friendlier passenger relations and threats that can take down an entire aircraft such as a bomb. Essentially, your Swiss Army pocket knife can’t take down an aircraft and will be allowed on board.
TSA workers and passengers are going to clash over this when the rules and regulations are broken.
How is someone treated when his or her knife with a blade longer than 2.36 inches is found on his or her person?
A quick Google search on TSA reveals how it treats some screening sessions with children and the elderly being groped and touched.
The Flight Attendants Union Coalition with almost 90,000 members and the Coalition of Airline Pilots Associations with 22,000 airline pilots are also opposed to this new policy change.
The new rules also allow hockey sticks, pool cues, lacrosse sticks and various other sports related items passengers can have in their carry-on luggage.
The orchestration and delegation of rules and restrictions is just arbitrary. Adding more regulations is not going to ease passenger interactions, it is going to inflame them, just as the responses prior to April 25 have shown.
I’m sure not all TSA agents are perverts and weirdos.
I’m also sure “Saturday Night Live” is going to be all over this one, just as it has every past TSA shift in policy.
