On my trip to Florida this weekend, every flight was full. I could not even get a boarding pass, until I reached the gate. Only from Indianapolis to Atlanta did I see empty seats and they were not many. I have already provided my frustration with the TSA. (Remember? Find people, not things).

I flew Delta on the way down and am returning US Airways on the return. The trip to Atlanta was short and sweet. Atlanta Airport was busy on Saturday morning. The foot traffic seemed non-stop in the airport and it was hard to find any place to sit. There were lines for food and coffee. I am thinking to myself, “I thought we were in a recession?”

I show up at the gate for my connecting flight to West Palm Beach looking for a seat. The gate agent says, “Well, you have to wait. The flight is overbooked and I requested volunteers. I think I have enough and you should get on the flight.” I say, “Ok fine, just please don’t stick me in a middle seat.” (When God wants to punish you, he sticks you in a middle seat). To add a little drama to the trip, we had a delay. The flight attendant assigned to our flight was injured on her previous flight. They had to look for a replacement.

I got on Facebook and asked a former classmate from High School who is a flight attendant, if she is available. Did not sound like it. She sounded like she had her own problems and was not about to give me any sympathy. She ignored me.

So, you know how it is when a flight is delayed and people are waiting. The waiting area is overflowing with bodies, there is no place to sit and I need a plug to charge my laptop. So, I decide to occupy some space in front of the window because it appears a seat is empty. Someone was saving it for their friend. No problem, I will just stand here. Luckily a guy gave me his seat, so he could find a plug. I decided I would rather eat my bagel and egg sandwich than find a plug.

I have to say, I like Delta’s standby board. I could see that a seat was assigned to me. All I had was my printed receipt that I had printed off before I left Indy. I just handed it to him when I was boarding and he printed off my seat assignment for me. So, I have to give the airlines credit, they have gotten more efficient in processing passengers at the gate, once it is time to board. (I know you road warriors out there are probably saying, well, duh and others may not agree).

You have to understand. Back in the day. They would pull your ticket, rubber band them, throw them into a bag. The bag would be sent to Barbados. They had an office workers key punch the ticket info into the back office system. Revenue would be posted a few days later. (What happened to all those keypunch operators in Barbados?)

We finally boarded the plane and were on our way. I arrived 45 minutes late. My Brother was waiting for me. As we started heading to his car, he got lost in the garage. (My brother is notorious for getting lost – so it was just a loving reminder of his being navigationally challenged). We back tracked and figured out where he parked. We were on our way.

For the return, there was drama too. I arrived at the airport on time. Since they took my shaving cream, I made it through security unscathed and grumpy. I had to make the sarcastic comment that I feel so much safer now having gone through security.

On to the gate! Well, my partner was with me. I leave him at Airtran and look for an outlet to plug my laptop so I could juice my phone. So, I head down to my gate, plug in all my devices to charge them up. He walks down. His flight is delayed because the afternoon Floridian thunderstorm shows up to wreak havoc on air traffic at Ft. Lauderdale.

Well, my flight is on-time. Crap – no it’s not. 20 minute delay? No problem with that. The flight is full! Every seat! So, I am happy, I have an aisle seat. I get back to my seat and there is a family sitting in it. The guy asks me, if I would switch seats. I reluctantly agree.

Now, everyone is coming onto the plane. All the seats are screwed up in the back. He sent me to the wrong row and I am sitting in someone else’s seat. I am mad at myself. I am thinking, Paul, used to be a pro. You know better. When the flight is full, you have to just sit in your assigned seat and make the deals after everyone has sat down.

Luckily it has worked out. I am still en route to my connection in Charlotte. We are running really tight. I have 15 minutes to get to my connection when I land. So, this story is not over. If I make the connection, no problems. If not, I am screwed because the delay was weather related. Based on what the Pilot is saying, we are getting no breaks to make up our time. There is rain slowing things down now.

Well, we landed. Everyone should have been able to make their flight. I had to go from concourse B at the end to Concourse C towards the end. It felt like a half mile walk.

Between the carriers, I found Delta’s people far more friendlier than the US Air crews. The flight attendants on the US Air flights seem cranky and scolding in a Sister Mary Elephant way. “Class, you need to turn those cell phones off now!” “Class, turn those cell phones off!” “TURN THOSE CELL PHONES OFF NOW!” – thaaank you.

I fell asleep on my leg from Charlotte to Indianapolis. I like to listen to music. They start the decent and I am finishing up a song. “Sir….turn your music off.” I roll my eyes. Let me finish my song.

The weekend adventure was over. I got off the plane, turned on Porcupine Tree and waited for my ride. The memory of flying over the weekend kept bringing me back to MOO. I miss the old days before all the rules, fears and baggage fees.

I took a trip to Florida this past weekend for business. I have to admit, I have not been on an airplane for a while. I used to work for American Airlines years ago and traveled often. I was a pro – literally. Since my time there, my current position as President of Professional Blog Service has not put me on too many airplanes, as we are able to conduct most our business online.

I used to travel a lot. I took my first trip when I was just 1 year old. It was to Budapest, Hungary. My brother said I cried all the way over to London on our Pan American (Pan Am) flight. (At least that what my brother says. I don’t remember).

As I got older, I took a lot more flights even in my youth to visit relatives in Europe. I flew a lot to Florida as well. Back in those days, it was always fun, even when things went wrong. Trips to Budapest were always an adventure because it was deep dark communism in the 60s and 70s. There always seemed to be a hundred check points with “passport please” from a uniformed army guy making sure that one of their citizens was not escaping. Airports and borders had uniformed army with AK-47s strapped to their back.

Have times changed. Going through the airport today in the United States is just a pain in the catooshi (as my wife would say-though I am not sure that is how she spells it). Instead of passports, we now show our driver license. We take our shoes off, our belts off, our leg braces off and are herded like cattle. Old men with hip replacements are scanned like suspects because the guy who can barely walk is got to be a suspect because the metal detector went off. Today, I feel like always saying MOOOO! when I am in line.

The Hungarians were actually smarter about processing people. They asked you questions about where are you going and what are you doing. If you had a US Passport they usually waived you through or asked what you were bringing into the country. They could not have you bringing blue jeans into the country and selling them on the black market.

For my flight to Florida, I made sure I wore shorts and sandals and had my laptop bag and a small weekend bag with clothes and a Dobson kit. I wanted to get through security without taking any clothing off with shoes I could slip on and off. Despite this preparation, I overlooked one small thing. I brought shaving cream so I could shave and be presentable for my client meeting.

Wouldn’t you know it, they pulled my bag aside. I am startled. What? It’s full of clothes. “Oh yeah, my Dobson kit.” The girl says, “I am sorry, this is too big (shaving cream), it has to stay here.” I am thinking, “Damn, I was so careful.

Here is my beef with the whole episode. She asked me no questions. We are spending all this money confiscating harmless items out of people’s Dobson kits without asking a single question. If you want me to feel safe, ask me questions, look at how I bought my ticket, find out what is in my head. I will gladly answer questions to where I am from, where I am going and what I am doing with confidence. I have nothing to hide. I am not a suspect either.

You need it because a terrorist can get through. We are spending all this money on machines for little old men to get a full body scans because their hip replacement triggered the metal detector. What a waste of time and money. If someone is going to blow up a plane, they are going to be nervous. You find nervous people and train your security to find nervous people. We need to look for people. The current system is a complete waste of money.

The current budget is $6.0 BILLION. $1 BILLION of which is printed money. To top it all off, Michael Chertoff is using his influence to peddle the new full body scanners.

According to the Washington Post:
Chertoff’s advocacy for the technology dates back to his time in the Bush administration. In 2005, Homeland Security ordered the government’s first batch of the scanners—five from California-based Rapiscan Systems.

Today, 40 body scanners are in use at 19 U.S. airports. The number is expected to skyrocket at least in part because of the Christmas Day incident. The Transportation Security Administration this week said it will order 300 more machines.

In the summer, TSA purchased 150 machines from Rapiscan with $25 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds.

What Chertoff has failed to reveal in his message. Rapiscan are his clients. And, Congress approved the funds. BOOOOO!

As we try to herd the masses through, the bad guy is getting through. The current system relies on technology to find things, despite the fact that it is people that commit the terrorist acts.

“WE SHOULD BE LOOKING FOR BAD PEOPLE, NOT THINGS!” Stop the madness already!

Let’s find a way to find people. The Israelis have been doing it for years. I would rather see us spend money providing a real security process than lining Michael Chertoff’s pockets and the pockets of his buddies with printed money.

Years ago, I used to work in the airline industry having spent 10 years in it. My first job was with American Airlines working in reservations in Hartford, CT. (Sad, the office is no longer there). My job required me to be trained on using SABRE, the original computer reservations system developed by IBM back in the 60s. To my knowledge, it is still being used today.

To modernize it, they have upgraded the GUI by putting another application on top of SABRE to make it more user friendly. Here lies the problem. Most of the online travel agencies are GUIs on top of the 60s technology that are the computer reservations system.

There was a company out of New York City that had developed a new booking engine specifically for online reservations. They used the 60s technology to only look at the availability of inventory on a flight, but built their own schedule and fare program. Speaking with my old boss, their system worked and was bought by Get Travel which was eventually bought by SABRE. I don’t think they ever implemented the fast and easy booking system.

So, here I was, making a reservation online and finding myself back in 1997 again. See, nothing has really changed. I went to Orbitz, Priceline, Southwest and Air Tran. All of them kind of suck. It seems that the designs are made based on the underlying technology and not what the user wanted.

The example for me was on Priceline, there was no way to request the flight I wanted and the morning with the flight I wanted in the evening on my return. They had the morning flight with another morning flight even though I told it I wanted a morning with an evening return. As an old SABRE hack, I would have simply selected my segments and said, “Give me the best price for those flights.”

So, in 10 years, non of these online agencies have made any improvements in the online booking experience. They seem more like Christmas Trees with all their 2nd sale decorations than a I need to buy an airline ticket. I advise people on 2nd sale stuff, but do it like the displays in your grocery store. Don’t distract people from their primary purpose for being there, to buy a ticket. Even Bob Parsons lets you get your domain name before he bombards you with all his chotzke offers.

Like AT&T’s confusing pricing, maybe the data is showing these online travel agents they make more money by making their booking systems suck. It just seems that buying an airline ticket online could be easier after all these years.
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In one of the strangest stories this week, a 4 year old boy was asked by the TSA in Philadelphia to remove his leg braces and put them through an x-ray machine.  The boy needed the braces to walk and he was made to go through the machine without the aide of his mother.

Here is the twist.  The boy’s Dad is a Police Detective form Camden, New Jersey.

What is the problem with this story?  If you recall in the interview with Bob Crandall on an earlier post, he says that intelligence is what is needed to protect people.  Bob Schneier who is a security expert coins the TSA efforts as Security Theater.

I used to call on Garber Travel in Boston.  The old man, Bernie Garber was a man with sayings.  The first one you learned form him was that “Companies do not do business with companies, people do business with people.”  So, to borrow from Bernie, “Objects don’t try to kill people, people try to kill people.”

The current security system being operated is a waste of money and ineffective.  The unfortunate process that works is profiling. For every old lady, 4 year old little, or middle-aged Father of 2 they pull from the line, the real people they need to speak to are probably getting throw their silly gauntlet.

I always tell the story of my experience after 9/11.  I was in Hungary for my cousins wedding.  In Budapest, the Hungarians pulled out the old Communist playbook for handling the crowds.  The sterilized the airport and had multiple passport checks in place.  They were not so much concerned about my bags, as they were about me.

Here, the whole system is set up to find objects instead of people.  It’s completely backwards.

The TSA apologized for what they made the family do.  Let’s face it.  The system is totally broken and an alternative needs to be put into place.  It is killing our airline industry and putting a crimp in economic development.  Fewer people are inclined to travel knowing the hassle with TSA at the airport.

We should all be apologizing to the family in Philadelphia because our irrational fears and realize that we should be looking for people, not things.
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I worked for American Airlines when Bob Crandall was running the company. To this day, I love to read or hear what it is he has to say. He is a tell it like it is kind of guy and always has been. The the difference between Bob Crandall and a lot of so called, “Tell it like it is guys today”, his commentary on the airline industry is based on fact and experience.

I was in International Sales at American Airlines in the early 90s. When we started running flights Internationally, we hired the Israelis to provide us with security consulting. The 5 layers of which he speaks, American Airlines has been doing since 1990 on International flights. If you research the shoe-bomber case, the AA security people in Paris red flagged Richard Reid and did their job.

Bob Crandall is right. it is about finding the people, not the things. The security theater we all experience at the airport actually puts us at risk because the time they are checking the little old lady, they may miss the real threat getting on a plane. This point was made at the beginning of the report when bomb making material made it on a plane as a test as carry on because the screener missed it. Which does not surprise me. An eyeball can not be mindful of details on a screen for a prolonged period of time.

Good security is about intelligence and human behavior.

Bob Crandall is right. Not every Muslim is a terrorist, but today, most terrorists are Muslims. It is a fact.

President Obama, hire Bob as your new Transportation Secretary. He would do it to serve his country, just like Mr. CR Smith did for President Johnson in the 1960s. He is right, we need Managers running these large organizations not political appointees. If we have an inefficient transportation system, this economy will continue to suffer and the terrorist have won. (This problem is not a Democrat or Republican issue, they both do it wrong).

Michael Chertoff, the former Homeland Security Chief is touting the $150,000 scanners on national TV. His firm happens to represent the company that makes the scanners. Boo to Mr. Chertoff. Let’s just add some more tax to your airline ticket to pay his consulting fee and his client’s new boat.