I’m a better driver than passenger. Not talking about the driving skills, really. I’m just more comfortable behind the wheel than in the passenger seat. Something about giving up control and trusting the driver. I can do it, no problem. I’m just saying I’d rather drive.
Jet airplane? Nah.
I’ll let the pilot do that, and trust that he (or she) has the skills or someone else would be behind the controls. I trust.
Apparently, the airline industry doesn’t. CNN reports that
Michael Roberts, a pilot for ExpressJet Airlines, refused a full-body scan last week at a Transportation Security Administration check point at Memphis International Airport in Memphis, Tennessee.
Roberts wanted to protect his privacy and thinks that security folks get too gropey while doing their “pat-downs.” I feel his pain on this one. I remember when I used to think flying was fun, sort of an adventure. Now – I consider it more of a beat-down. The whole process of getting on an airliner makes me think of cattle trudging through the chutes to slaughter.
I never get through security without having to be trotted off to the side, removing shoes and undergoing the extra measures that my co-travelers miss. It’s the subversive-looking shape I wear – gotta be smuggling something under that shirt. Hey, it’s just extra me.
Likely, Roberts wasn’t on-the-job or in uniform, but you’d think there would be some professional courtesy extended to a trusted member of the flying elite. Would a golf course charge Phil Mickelson a green fee to play a round? Does Lady Gaga have to eat in the walk-in cooler when she’s wearing the meat-dress? I don’t think so.
A writer named John Nance used to write some great suspense novels about the airline industry, but they’re hard to read anymore. In his stories, people are smoking in their seats, wandering up to the cockpit and chatting with the pilot, and – the security? I don’t think that word appears in a single one of his novels. It was a naive pre-9/11 time.
Horse and buggy days were a lot simpler for the security department. It was the sanitation boys that had it rough…
The way it used to be:
Mo Info:
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