r.

Scientific Method

After roughly twenty flights this year with most arrivals at the airport with far less than the recommended hour to clear security, I have finally discovered how much time before the flight is too little to make it through: nine minutes.

I think I could have made it if I’d pre-printed a boarding pass, but I don’t know how to use the damn printers in the new office yet. As far as I can recall, this is my first missed flight in almost ten years so I’m not too upset. Though if I’d known I wasn’t going to make it I would have stopped to put gas in the rental before returning it.

“The only reason these rules exist from the F.A.A. is because of agency inertia and paranoia.” This is one of those things I’d been wishing for for ages, replacing the lit no smoking sign with something useful. However, notification that electronic devices should be off is not one of those things. If this is about aircraft safety, electronic devices should never need to be turned off at the sole responsibility of the passengers. Clearly this is unenforceable, and thus ridiculous. I haven’t shut off a laptop or put a phone into “airplane” mode ever during takeoff and landing, and with the hundreds of flights I’ve taken in the past few years I don’t believe I’ve caused any of them to crash. Why the huge discrepancy between security in the airport, and lack of security on the plane? Just-because-I-said-so type rules don’t really work any more, and make an already odious process even less enjoyable. Please show me the independent science-based research backing this FUD up, instead of simply teaching the poor flight staff to recite an ever growing laundry list of banned devices before each takeoff.

“The only reason these rules exist from the F.A.A. is because of agency inertia and paranoia.”

This is one of those things I’d been wishing for for ages, replacing the lit no smoking sign with something useful. However, notification that electronic devices should be off is not one of those things. If this is about aircraft safety, electronic devices should never need to be turned off at the sole responsibility of the passengers. Clearly this is unenforceable, and thus ridiculous. I haven’t shut off a laptop or put a phone into “airplane” mode ever during takeoff and landing, and with the hundreds of flights I’ve taken in the past few years I don’t believe I’ve caused any of them to crash. Why the huge discrepancy between security in the airport, and lack of security on the plane? Just-because-I-said-so type rules don’t really work any more, and make an already odious process even less enjoyable. Please show me the independent science-based research backing this FUD up, instead of simply teaching the poor flight staff to recite an ever growing laundry list of banned devices before each takeoff.