Recently main stream media including today's WAPO discusses the issue of private security firms vis a vis TSA coverage for various airports. What these articles do not disclose is the lacks of security efforts for the airports and the terminals themselves.
The wrong strategy has been chosen by TSA and now clustering of visitors and passengers, arriving and departing, are good targets for terrorists. The airlines, an industry that has never really made money without government subsidy, still stick to a past of glamorous airline travel and characters and airline travel well never again have that fig leaf for many wrongheaded solutions.
Each major terminal needs to be redesigned so that passengers are screened far away from the terminal and their baggage also and then transported under secure arrangements to the terminal itself. NO MORE GREETERS or TEARS and KISSES at the terminal itself. This should be done well away from the terminal itself. MUMBAI proved as has past events that crowded places, including stadiums, should be treated as potential targets.
So time to wake up TSA and design a new system of airport and passenger terminal protection and that is in addition to the aircraft and their passenger and cargo loads themselves.
This is the last post of 2010 so Happy New Years to All!
