Not TSA Status related

But our lovely Senators want to pass the Stop Online Piracy Act, which won't stop online piracy but will affect legit websites. Probably not TSA Status. But, still. Jesus. Go here to fight back (since you're already fighting back against the TSA).

An attempt to explain the "turn off your devices" rule

We've all been there. The plane taxis back from the gate. Something important happens on the internet! You scroll down your mobile device when suddenly a stern-looking flight attendant tells you that the device can't be used during take-off and landing, and can only be used with transmission disabled later in the flight. When you've been told it's okay. Because, apparently, it could cause the plane to fall from the sky.

Apparently not. As this Times blog post points out, no plane has ever dropped from the sky due to the use of a mobile device. Ever. Many mobile devices have come in to existence since these rules were put in to place, but all are banned. (And why can you use a cell phone but not a laptop during post-landing taxi when the two technologies are quickly converging?) The best reason anyone can offer that this ban exists is that there is no evidence that electronic gadgets can't interfere with a plane. But, of course, the same study found that there is no evidence that they can. In fact, the FAA doesn't even have (pdf) a set list of devices they ban, but they leave it up to the airlines.

Obviously, this is a large load of horse hockey. I've frequently not only not turned off my device, but actively used it. Here are some examples:

• In June of 2008, I was on a flight from DEN to MSP which was delayed, allowing me to listen to some of the Celtics-Lakers finals game being played (my father played the radio in to a cell phone which I held to my ear away from the aisle). We finally took off during the fourth quarter, at which point I was able to carry the cell phone call through about 4000 feet. The Celtics won. The fellow next to me appreciated the score updates; the woman across the aisle gave me a stare of death. The airplane flight was without any consequence.
• The next year, I was flying over a friends' house approaching the airport. I sent a text message to that effect. The plane landed safely.
• I never power down my computer. I simply put it to sleep.
• In 2010, I used Google Voice to dial in to a conference call through GoGo inflight, which was forbidden by GoGo but worked like a charm with Google Voice. So there goes the "they don't want people having conversations" argument.
• I've recently been using an iPhone speedometer app to see how fast planes are traveling when they take off and land. It doesn't work so well at high altitudes. But it hasn't yet crashed a plane.

And every time I fly, I try to think of new ways to subvert this rule. I never take the battery out of my wristwatch (which certainly could crash a plane!). Maybe next time I'll turn on my headlamp to see what happens (probably a plane crash) or bring a transistor radio (crash-tastic). A few years ago I had a pilot dial up the local Boston Red Sox affiliate and play AM radio over the in-flight entertainment system until the signal was lost (Channel 9 on United is quite versatile). And the plane arrived at it's destination unscathed.

A couple new site features

1. We've gotten a flood of submissions in recent days (everyone traveling and standing in lines) and have added a countdown to 2000 submissions ticker on the home page. As of this writing, there are 135 statuses to go!

2. We've added a few more (12, to be precise) major airports to the search page so you can just click and go; no need to type and search. Not a big deal, but better use of screen real estate.

Let us know how you like it!

Statistics!

Over on the site there's a new page which charts the "color" of each submission for each month since the site launched. Cool stuff!

New filters

A few weeks ago, we noticed some issues with the submissions to the site. For instance, people were writing their entries in ALL CAPS! Or they were forgetting dates, or to submit a status "color" or something else. Or they were using the site to propagate political views. So I put a bunch of new filters in. (Note: if you're not a nerd, you can probably stop reading here.) And I asked people to report if the filters were causing any problems. I tried them, and they worked. But, as we all know, making any changes can create any number of other issues arise.

So I got an email from someone who was unable to submit. They sent me a screenshot:

and were receiving an error message to please TURN OFF THE CAPS LOCK key. I pretty quickly figured out what the problem was, and fixed it. So, before I tell you what it was, take a quick think . I'll put the answer in the comments.

725 guns!

A friend forwards the following from Blogger Bob via the Economist:

Speaking of good catches, did you know that our officers have found 725 firearms in carry-on luggage since January of 2011? And it’s still only September!

So that's about 1000 firearms per year. (!) There are that many absentminded American gun-owners who totally forget that, oh, whoops, you can't bring a gun on a plane? It mentions a 1-2% failure rate which seems, actually, sort of okay—in other words, a would-be terrorist would be caught 49 times out of 50 trying to sneak stuff on board, which seems like a pretty good deterrent.

Of course, the body scanners do precious little to find the guns. No one here (that I know of) is arguing against WTMDs at airports. You know, because they actually do something.

This one takes the cake (or, don't get the runs airborne on Sept. 11)

So, there was the anniversary of September 11. And on that anniversary, we pretty much forgot about all the freedom we have here in the good ol' US and A. Amongst the stories of particular crazy was the widely-reported DEN-DTW Frontier flight which was delayed on the ground in Detroit because, uh, some brown-ish people were all seated in the same row. Seriously.

Someone shouted for us to place our hands on the seats in front of us, heads down. The cops ran down the aisle, stopped at my row and yelled at the three of us to get up. “Can I bring my phone?” I asked, of course. What a cliffhanger for my Twitter followers! No, one of the cops said, grabbing my arm a little harder than I would have liked. He slapped metal cuffs on my wrists and pushed me off the plane. The three of us, two Indian men living in the Detroit metro area, and me, a half-Arab, half-Jewish housewife living in suburban Ohio, were being detained.

In other words, go and read the whole post.

This is beyond compare for so many reasons. First of all, the terrorists back in the day attacked planes from United and American and flew them in to New York and Washington. There's less bang for your buck hijacking a Frontier plane and flying it in to, what, an abandoned building in downtown Detroit? Aside from that sort of snark, three people who don't look like Norman Rockwell's picture of America sitting in the same row does not a crisis make. Even if two of the guys get up, in succession, to go to the bathroom.

I could see if they were chanting in some foreign language. I mean, sure, it would probably still be an overreaction, and it would be unwarranted, but this does not seem to have been the case. Or if they were trying to light their shoes on fire. In that case, yeah, kick their butts.

But, it wasn't. Apparently someone got spooked, told a flight attendant, and everyone flipped out. The FBI interviewed everyone on the plane. I hope they figure out what numbskull got so spooked of someone who didn't look just like them. I hope the TSA, and airline crews, and even fellow passengers, can use this as a learning experience to not get creeped out when the person next to them doesn't look like a real 'Merkin. And I hope this kind of miscarriage never happens again.

Of course, I think a lot of what we can learn from this instance, and from September 11 itself, is that we need to be more open with our friends and neighbors and, well anyone in out community. This is the United States. This is somewhere where a Saudi Arabian and a Jew get married and no one looks at them funny (well, unless they happen to be seated next to two Indian-looking fellows). This is the melting pot. We need to celebrate diversity, not fear it. Imagine if someone had reached out to talk to these folks. Say, "hi." Ask them about their flight, and their trip. Find out that they are, hey, normal Americans just like everyone else. Diffuse the situation (which, of course, wasn't a situation until it was made a situation). And get everyone off of the plane and in to the terminal and on with their lives.

And once the plane was on the ground, well, all hell seems to have broken loose. Maybe protocol was followed, in which case protocol needs to be changed. In god's (allah's?) holy name, why are you strip searching these people? Why are you handcuffing them? What kind of harm could they do to anyone other than themselves with something they smuggled through security (oh, wait) once the plane is on the ground? Innocent until proven guilty apparently does not apply when you are on an airplane and don't look just like everyone else on the craft. This is another point where a little common sense (talk to the people, run a quick background check, find out that—hey, look!—they're not terrorists) is much better than humiliating them, handcuffing them and leading them in shackles for an interrogation. Lordy, what are they going to tell you about living in suburban Ohio, after all?

If I were a passenger on this plane—and if I had been inconvenienced for hours for no real reason other than a few people getting a little too excited about the Evil Doers—I'd want a full explanation from the airline. Not the FBI's cop out "Due to the anniversary of Sept. 11, all precautions were taken, and any slight inconsistency was taken seriously. The public would rather us err on the side of caution than not." (Apparently some folks on a LA to NY flight also had the shits, and that flight was also escorted in, but they must have been white, so they they avoided the interrogation.) No, I'd want to know why the flight crew, once on the ground, called for the police, taxied away from the gate, and put in motion a long-term interrogation.

This sounds like a JANFU* between Frontier, the local DHS (gosh) and the flight crew. Cooler heads should have prevailed.

* JANFU, in the vein of SNAFU and FUBAR, is a joint Army-Navy foul up, when multiple parties are to blame for a sticky situation. To put it nicely.