air travel

One More Bit of Evidence That The Government Is Too Incompetent To Be Trusted With So Much Power And Money

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

 The Transportation Security Administration has started to phase out its rule requiring travelers to take off their shoes before going through airport security.  The New York Times writes that “the agency has not officially announced this change and did not confirm the new policy” but it “appears to be taking effect at airports across the country.” Caleb Harmon-Marshall, a former TSA officer, first reported the soft launch of this policy via his travel newsletter. It appears to be happening first at major airports, then trickling down to all of them.

The requirement was one of the best examples of what Ethics Alarms calls The Barn Door Fallacy: a rare or preventable incident occurs attracting lots of media attention, and lawmakers or regulators react hysterically with draconian measures that are expensive, obtrusive, ineffective and unnecessary to ensure that what had never happened before won’t happen again.

Richard Reid (above) is an incompetent British terrorist who tried to bring down a passenger plane in 2001 by igniting a plastique bomb in his shoe. (The fuse was wet, and he couldn’t get it to light.) This coming being so soon after the September 11 bombings and everyone being freaked out over the failure of airport security that allowed that tragedy, the TSA decided to make all commercial airline passengers remove their shoes and have them x-rayed forever. Morons. (My mother observed that we should regard ourselves as lucky that a female terrorist hadn’t tied to set off a bomb in her brassiere.) And it has taken 24 years for someone in charge to decide, “You know, this is kind of stupid.”

“Why now?” Harmon-Marshall asked in his newsletter. “I think it’s politics, not security. A handful of lawmakers have recently ramped up criticism of the TSA, with some even floating the idea of dismantling the agency altogether. From complaints about long lines to inconsistent screening experiences, the pressure has been mounting. And this shoe change? It feels like a direct response to that pressure.”

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New Ways To Cheat: The Fake Flight Attendant!

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Tirone Alexander, 35, has been convicted of impersonating a flight attendant at least 120 times in order to get free commercial airline flights between 2018 and 2024 . He also doesn’t know how to spell “Tyrone.”

There is a common airline policy (that I never heard of before) allowing flight attendants and pilots from other airlines to fly for free. Alexander knew about the benefit because he had worked as a flight attendant for regional airlines between 2013 and 2015. He visited airline websites and checked the “flight attendant” option during the online check-in process. There he would find a form asking applicants to list their current employer in the industry, their hiring date, and badge number. Alexander faked all of it and counted on no one bothering to check. No one did.

Almost all examples of audacious cheating and grifting depend on 1) people trusting strangers to be honest, which is, sadly, a mistake; 2) people not doing their jobs diligently, which many don’t; 3) systems that have yawning loopholes that sociopaths can exploit, and 4) the cheater/con artist having boundless audacity.

Number 4 eventually gets most cheaters caught.

Alexander has been found guilty of four counts of wire fraud and one count of fraudulently accessing a restricted area of ​​the airport. He faces decades in prison at his sentencing, which is scheduled for August 25.

Meanwhile, the airlines will be tightening their free flight policies, and maybe eliminating them. As is so often the case, the rare cheat spoils a nice thing for everyone else.

An Ethics Can of Worms: The Mental Health of Airline Pilots

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Great: one more thing I wish I didn’t have to worry about…

The New York Times has an article up [Gift link!] titled “Why Airline Pilots Feel Pushed to Hide Their Mental Illness.” Wait—there are mentally ill people flying planes? Yikes. But of course there are…depending on what is called a “mental illness” at any given time.

In the Denzel Washington film “Flight,” the actor plays an excellent pilot who is an alcoholic and cocaine abuser. He saves a plane full of passengers from doom by executing a brilliant but risky mid-air maneuver, then has to cover up the fact that he was drunk when he did it. I haven’t checked lately to see if alcoholism is current classified as a mental problem, but having had extensive experience in the area, I have concluded that it is a physical problem with profound effects on mental and emotional stability, so I really don’t care if it’s technically a mental illness or not. Alcoholics and recovering alcoholics should not be piloting aircraft.

Isn’t that an easy call? The same call should apply to bi-polar individuals, chronic depressives, OCD sufferers…but how far down the list do we go? It’s been estimated that as much as 20% of successful individuals, high-performers, are sociopaths. I don’t think I want to know how many airline pilots are narcissists. Once upon a time, homosexuality was considered a mental illness. Next up: transsexual pilots.

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Scientists Who Make Recommendations Like This Forfeit the Privilege of Being Taken Seriously

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

And yet how many climate change hysterics, including some regulators and elected officials, will quote them as authority anyway? Geena has an answer…

Researchers at the University of Cambridge announced their solution to the contribution of air travel to world-ending carbon emissions: force airplanes to fly more slowly. Reducing flight speeds about 15% would add an average of 50 minutes to flights. The measure would slash fuel burn by 5 to 7%, reducing the 4% industry contribution to overall climate change. These findings will be presented to the science-savvy delegates at the United Nations.

The scientists argue that longer flights could be offset by more efficiently organized airports with fewer holdups. Apparently these people haven’t flown recently. Can distinguished scientists also be deluded morons? It’s a rhetorical question.

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The Mystery of the Unqualified Pilot

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

I’m not sure what’s going on here, but somebody someplace was awfully unethical somewhere.

Passengers on the August 8th Alaska Airlines flight 3492, in the air after taking off from San Francisco bound for Jackson Hole, Wyoming, were stunned to hear their captain announce as the plane was about to land at its destination, “Hey, I’m really sorry folks, but due to me not having the proper qualification to land in Jackson Hole, we need to divert to Salt Lake City, Utah. We’ll keep you posted on the next steps.”

Hey, no problem, it could happen to anyb….WHAT?

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Apparently “I Can’t Breathe!” Is Now the Official “Get Martyr Status Free!” Card

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

As crazy as this loon melting down in her airplane seat was, she had sufficient marbles loose and rolling around to try out the “I can’t breath!” line. This was, you will recall, famously used by two arrest-resisting African American males who really couldn’t breathe while inept and overly-violent police officers attempted to take them into custody.

Eric Garner deserves credit for the line; he really couldn’t breathe after being gang-tacked by three NYC police officers, though it didn’t help that Garner was morbidly obese. (“You take your victim as you find him”) George Floyd then memorably gave Garner’s catchy line an encore. He really couldn’t breathe either, possibly from claustrophobia, definitely from a fentanyl overdose, though it didn’t help that Officer Derek Chauvin was kneeling on his neck.

It was a nice try by the Spirit Airline wacko, but she neglected to consider the absolutely essential feature of playing the “I can’t breathe!” card.

You have to die.

At Least They Weren’t Flying A Boeing 737 Max…

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Now these were unethical pilots:

Evoking a memorable scene in “National Lampoon’sVacation” but in a passenger jet instead of a station wagon, the pilot and co-pilot of Batik Air flight en-route to Jakarta fell asleep in the cockpit of their Airbus A320 for 28 minutes. The 153 passengers and four flight attendants on board did not know that no one was flying the plane. A preliminary report by Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee explained why the plane drifted off its designated flight path during the January 25 incident, and it sounds like a version of “Airplane!”

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“It Wasn’t Our Fault! That Bad Robot Did It!”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Hey, Canada Air! Can you say, “accountability?” How about “responsibility”? Sure you can.

Jake Moffat needed to fly from Vancouver to Toronto to deal with the death of his grandmother. Before he bought the tickets for his flights, he checked to se whether Air Canada had a bereavement policy, and the company’s website AI assistant told him he was in luck (after telling him it was sorry for his loss, of course.) Those little mechanical devils are so lifelike!

The virtual employee explained that if he purchased a regular priced ticket, he would have up to 90 days to claim the bereavement discount. Its exact words were:”If you need to travel immediately or have already traveled and would like to submit your ticket for a reduced bereavement rate, kindly do so within 90 days of the date your ticket was issued by completing our Ticket Refund Application form.” So Moffatt booked a one-way ticket to Toronto to attend the funeral, and after the family’s activities a full-price passage back to Vancouver. Somewhere along the line he also spoke to a human being who is an Air Canada representative—at least she claimed to be a human being— confirmed that Air Canada had a bereavement discount. He felt secure, between the facts he had obtained from the helpful bot and the non-bot, that he would eventually pay only $380 for the round trip after he got the substantial refund on the $1600 non-bereavement tickets he had purchased.

After Granny was safely sent to her reward, Jake submitted documentation for the refund. Surprise! Air Canada doesn’t have a reimbursement policy for bereavement flights. You either buy the discounted tickets to begin with, or you pay the regular fare. The chatbot invented the discount policy, just like these things make up court cases. A small claims adjudicator in British Columbia then enters the story, because the annoyed and grieving traveler sought the promised discount from the airline.

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American Airline Pilot To “A Nation Of Assholes”: Don’t Be An Asshole

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

A video has gone “viral” of an American Airlines pilot’s pre-flight speech telling passengers to behave ethically, with over 5 million views on Instagram and other platforms. He said in part (the videos miss the very beginning of the speech, apparently):

Welcome on board our flight. Remember: The flight attendants are primarily here for your safety.  After that, they’re here to make your flight more enjoyable. They’re going to take care of you guys, but you will listen to what they have to say because they represent my will in the cockpit or in the cabin, and my will is what matters. Be nice to each other. Be respectful to each other. I shouldn’t have to say that. You people should treat each other the way you want to be treated. But I have to say it every single flight because people don’t, and they’re selfish and rude, and we won’t have it, okay? Stow your stuff. Get it out of everybody else’s way. Put your junk where it belongs. Everybody here paid for a space. Don’t lean on other people. Don’t fall asleep on other people. Don’t pass out on other people or drool on ‘em unless you’ve talked about it and they have a weather-assisted jacket. All right. A little bit of fatherhood here, the other thing. The social experiment on listening to videos on speaker mode and talking on a cellphone on speaker mode…that is over, over and done in this country. Nobody wants to hear your video. I know you think it’s super sweet, and it probably is, but it’s your business, right? Keep it to yourself. Use your airbuds, your headphones, whatever it is. That’s your business, okay? It’s just part of being in a respectful society. Middle seaters: I know it stinks to be in the middle. Raise ‘em up. Anybody in the middle? Like five people. Yeah, right. That’s full. All right. Nobody’s listening. Fine. You own both armrests. That is my gift to you.

You can hear the speech here.

Observations:

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Ethics Quiz: The Strict Pilot

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

“So here’s the deal. If this continues while we’re on the ground, I’m going to have to pull back to the gate, everybody’s going to have to get off, we’re going to have to get security involved, and [your] vacation is going to be ruined. Whatever that AirDrop thing is — quit sending naked pictures, let’s get yourself to Cabo.”

Southwest Airlines defended the pilot, saying that the safety, security, and wellbeing of customers and employees was its “highest priority at all times…
When made aware of a potential problem, our employees address issues to support the comfort of those traveling with us.”

And will, therefore, even punish everybody to support that comfort…

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Was the pilot’s threat responsible, fair and competent?

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This is a new one on me.

A Southwest Airlines pilot threatened to turn the plane around and return to the departure gate after one of the passengers on board received nude photos via AirDrop and reported the incident to airline staff.

He told the plane,

“So here’s the deal. If this continues while we’re on the ground, I’m going to have to pull back to the gate, everybody’s going to have to get off, we’re going to have to get security involved, and [your] vacation is going to be ruined. Whatever that AirDrop thing is — quit sending naked pictures, let’s get yourself to Cabo.”

Southwest Airlines defended the pilot, saying that the safety, security, and wellbeing of customers and employees was its “highest priority at all times…
When made aware of a potential problem, our employees address issues to support the comfort of those traveling with us.”

And will, therefore, even punish everybody to support that comfort…

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Was the pilot’s threat responsible, fair and competent?

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