A few days ago, Norm proposed this:
You’ll laugh at the idea. Please feel free. Everybody else has – family and friends to whom I’ve put it. But it’s an idea I’ve had for many years – certainly from way back before 9/11 – and I feel I should go public with it finally, with the restrictions announced today on hand luggage for those travelling by air. Here is the proposal: airline passengers to travel lightly clad and without any luggage at all, other than essential documents, medicines etc.
It would be very inconvenient, of course. You’d have either to buy what you needed at your destination, or mail it ahead of time, or borrow from friends if you have them there. A new line of business might emerge hiring out stuff to visitors from other countries. I haven’t done a full cost-benefit analysis of the proposal. But you’ll have grasped its core rationale by now. It would make terrorist assaults on passenger planes much more difficult. You read it first on normblog.
Little did he know that this was precisely what was happening on Thursday
Around 10,000 bags checked in by British Airways passengers have gone missing at airports since the UK security alert began, the airline says.
More worryingly, there were reports on Channel 4 news about large-scale theft of valuables from passenger’s luggage, exactly as seasoned travellers had predicted. Either this is an ‘inside job’ by crooked baggage handling staff, or unauthorised people are getting into secure areas to steal stuff. The first implies that any security vetting of baggage staff is woefully inadequate. The second implies the same about physical security within the airport. If they’re failing to screen out thieves, who has any confidence that they’d be any more successful at screening out terrorists? Will the next terrorist attack on an aircraft involve a bomb smuggled on board in baggage handling?
Actually Norm’s idea isn’t new. Some years ago there was a management reshuffle and I ended up with a senior magager who had really been round the world with the airline and knew how the operation really worked. This was quite refreshing as IT people tend to be at least one step removed from the shap-end – usually we are sent in by folk who are themselves one step back from the true operation.
Anyway, his view was that passenger baggage was such a hassle that it would be more effctive if we just fed the whole baggage system into a big incinerator and paid compensation out for “lost bags” at the other end of the journey.
Not practical I know, but this was not long after the opening of T4 at Heathrow and the lost bags situation then was so bad that our real target was to get down to 50 bags per thousand, not the published target of 20 per thousand.
But that remark was simply due to the hassle passenger bags cause for airlines. The security threat was not part of it.
There were still terrorists back then you know. I remember the time the IRA lobbed a mortar barrage over the perimiter fence into T4. The difference now is that you can deal with a terrorist who is planning on making a political point and surviving to make it again. Someone who is not planning on surviving is not interested in any deal you might be able to offer.
I just read the last paragraph of Tim’s post and I can’t help but think C4 were over-egging the pudding. Yes reported thefts from baggage were up. I understand the average number at Gatwick over a weekend like the last was 16 and in fact there were 52 incidents reported. This is far too many, any is too many, but not large scale given the number of bags in the system.
Over the years various steps have been taken to reduce this sort of thing and, until the security inspectors insisted that all bags be unlocked, it had just about been stamped out. Now so many people have the right to rummage through the bags that trying to work out where in the system something went missing has become very difficult indeed.
There are two steps that law abiding folk can take to deal with this.
1: If you can’t affort to lose it, don’t put it in hold baggage. Actually, think carefully about buying expensive stuff in the first place. Do you own it or does it own you? If your happiness is dependant upon expensive toys, perhaps you need to try life without them for a while anyway.
2: Kill the market for stolen property by being very careful where you buy things from. If folk can’t sell stuff there’s no point stealing it in the first place.
In a lot of cases, it’s not so much ‘expensive toys’ as the tools of people’s trades. Not just businessmen with laptops, but people like professional photographers and musicians. Who in their right mind would entrust a £10,000 cello to airport baggage handlers? Are such people not expected to be able to work outside their own country?
I admit that the hold baggage rules were not phrased with the needs of professional musicians in mind.
For that matter the first set were not written with the needs of insulin dependant diabetics in mind either. How was one supposed prove the contents of a 3ml cartridge inside the pen was insulin?
Professional camera equipment tends to be marked with serial numbers and in other less obvious ways. My understanding is that stealing this sort of stuff is asking for trouble as it is very easy to identify.
Of course the best solution is to keep the baggage area secure. Right now though all the eyes seem to be looking for unauthorised things comming in rather than unauthorised things going out.