Traveling Sounds Like a Real Blast These Days

Michael Boyd used to work at American Airlines, and assured Imus the skies were very safe at that time because he steered clear of the cockpit. Now the president of Boyd Group International, an aviation consulting firm, he pretty much killed everybody’s pre-holiday buzz by highlighting the myriad flaws with this country’s airport security practices. 
 
“Groping grandma doesn’t make us any safer,” Boyd said. “It just means grandma’s getting a thrill for the first time in 30 years.”
 
The real problem, in his view, is the lax security on the tarmac. “The people who are working putting stuff on the airplanes, the people who are in the catering department or working on the ramp—they’re not checked at all,” he said.
 
All the noise of late regarding full-body scanning machines and too-close-for-comfort pat downs is therefore “a tempest in a teapot,” as Boyd sees it, because “really inept people” continue to run airport security—people like Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who he pointed out couldn’t even control her own borders as Governor of Arizona.
 
Rather than reacting to terrorists’ attempts to sneak bombs or other explosives onto planes, Boyd believes the U.S. should instead be trying to anticipate Al-Qaeda’s next move. “What we have to have is a situation where we have people running security who think like terrorists, who look at Kennedy Airport and say, ‘If I was Al-Qaeda, what would I do?’” he said.
 
The full-body scanning machines are, he said, “nothing more than a reaction to a rich Nigerian kid who tried to blow up an airplane over Ontario last year.” As he sees it, the focus of airport security should be less on the people and more on the buildings themselves.
 
“We screen ourselves into literally looking like people who just walked away from Hiroshima,” Boyd said, referring to the potentially dangerous levels of radiation given off by the full-body scanners. “It doesn’t fix the problem.”
 
Known for its intense airport security standards, Israelis “do basically a Barbara Walters interview with everybody getting on an airplane,” Boyd joked. Since that approach wouldn’t fly (no pun intended) in the U.S., he recommended at least adopting their level of awareness and inquiring, for example, why a catering truck might be parked in the fuel area.
 
The solution, he thinks, is to have actual security experts—and not lifelong politicians—running airport security. “You don’t want the Marines in Afghanistan run by a chiropractor,” Boyd said. “But that’s kind of what we have for airport security.”
 
-Julie Kanfer