Recently, the EU Parliament voted to repeal the “liquids on airplanes” ban that has contributed to making airline security today look like a Monty Python sketch and ruined my favorite part of traveling, bringing home expensive wine and scotch from places where it’s half of what I pay in Canada. That’s not to say it’s over. The US is very quick to implement ridiculous and ineffective rules in the name of security but, glacially slow to repeal them, even in the face of damning logic and evidence to the contrary.You see, I hate stupid rules. Especially when those rules are implemented in the name of a greater good that it clearly does not serve. Let me offer an example. A couple of years ago, I was in Las Vegas with my wife and some friends for a weekend. The ladies got the brilliant idea that we should all eat at the restaurant at the Stratosphere Hotel. You know, the one that serves mediocre food, charges double what it’s worth and rotates to give you a 360 degree view of the whole city, making everyone queasy with motion sickness. Anyway, we made a reservation and when the time came, walked to the elevator for the restaurant through the casino/lobby of the Stratosphere, past thousands of gamblers, partiers, hotel guests and people wheeling giant luggage everywhere . However, this was no simple elevator. First, there was only one car, it’s only destination the restaurant however, to get to that elevator, you had to go through a metal detector and x-ray machine, just like at an airport. There’s one lone private security guy standing there manning the post and he’s got a look on his face like he’s fighting a diarrhea attack. Faced with this, I can’t help it, I gotta ask. “Um, excuse me, what’s all this for?” The guy snaps to attention like I just pulled a grenade out of my pocket “What’s all WHAT for?”, “Um, this, you know, all the security”. In a tone that implies I must have an IQ of 15, he says to me, “Sir, haven’t you heard of 9/11?”Well, now it’s on! “Of course I’ve heard of 9/11, but what does that have to do with this nonsense? It’s a restaurant fer chrissakes!” My wife, knowing me all too well, groans then moves away, pretending we’re not together because a Taser incident is now inevitable but, I press on, in the face of silly and ridiculous rules enforced by people armed with guns and high school equivalency diplomas. “I don’t wanna be up there in that restaurant when terrorists send up a suicide bomber” he says, sounding like he’s parroting something he heard the janitor say in the break room. “Why in the hell would terrorists want to blow up a crummy 50 seat restaurant in Las Vegas when they could set off a bomb much easier in the casino I just walked through, where there’s literally thousands of people and where they could drag suitcases full of bombs in without so much as a second glance?” He stares blankly, as if I just thought of something no one else ever had, “I’ll tell you why, because it’s cheaper to pay you $6 an hour, throw this 20 year old junk here and call it security than it is to actually secure the place by making thousands of casino guests go through screening or trying to secure the Las Vegas strip. That way, if something ever does go wrong, the company can have their lawyers defend themselves from the inevitable lawsuits by saying “we had security, we did everything we could to prevent it”". Suddenly, he had a look on his face like I just kicked his dog, I was right and he knew it. I still had to take off my shoes. The dessert was OK though.What does this have to do with being a photographer? Well, I dread everything about flying. It’s not that I’m scared of flying, I’m not, and I’ve been in a couple of near crashes to boot, one in which we even crumpled one of the wings. I just hate everything else about it but, when a good chunk of your income comes from doing travel photography, it’s hard to avoid flying. As such, I follow a bunch of online forums and columns like Flyertalk and the Ask the Pilot column on Salon. Patrick Smith is an airline pilot in the US and today’s column caught my attention because he offers a refreshing take on security from the point of view of someone who should really be concerned about it. Hope you agree. If you don’t, and you’re looking for work, I know a private security company in Las Vegas who’s looking for a new security guard to man an important national security post.

Update: I took this shot from my seat on an Oasis Airlines flight to Hong Kong. Their logo was actually visible on the wing tip but, I photoshopped it out with plans to use the image as stock. The day after I posted this, Oasis announced they were bankrupt. I’m pretty sure my photoshopping had nothing to do with it.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 30th, 2008 at 3:13 pm and is filed under airline security, travel.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.