The Scanner Scam

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Never one to cross the road to avoid an approaching bandwagon UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has given the go-ahead for full body scanners to be introduced at Britain's airports. BAA, which runs six UK airports rather badly, said it would now install the machines "as soon as is practical" at Heathrow. Experts have questioned the scanners' effectiveness at detecting the type of bomb allegedly used on Christmas Day in an attempted plane attack over Detroit.

Here's the latest hoop to jump through. Yes, there's a 'professional' that can see all your gadgetry. That part I don't personally mind, but just where is it gonna stop? This is incremental erosion of privacy and freedom, all in the name of the government protecting you.

The £80,000 full body scanners, which produce "naked" images of passengers, remove the need for "pat down" searches. They work by beaming electromagnetic waves on to passengers while they stand in a booth. A virtual three-dimensional image is then created from the reflected energy. Some have voiced concerns about privacy, with campaigners saying they are tantamount to a "strip search".

In the London Evening Standard Tory MP Ben Wallace, who was involved in the testing and development of the technology, warns it was not "the big silver bullet". He said the "passive millimeter wave scanners" probably would not have picked up the failed Detroit airliner plot or the explosives used in the 2005 London bombings.

Mr Wallace (Lancaster & Wyre) was employed by QinetiQ as their overseas director in the security and intelligence division. QinetiQ helped develop the passive millimeter wave technology. He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "The advantage of the millimeter waves are that they can be used at longer range, they can be quicker and they are harmless to travellers.


Body Scanner

"But there is a big but and the but was all the testing that we undertook, it was unlikely that it would have picked up the current explosive devices being used by al Qaeda. It probably wouldn't have picked up the Detroit Delta Airlines bomb on Christmas Day." He continued: "It probably wouldn't have picked up the very large plot with the liquids in 2006 at Heathrow or indeed the later July bombs that were used on the Tube because it wasn't very good and it wasn't that easy to detect liquids and plastics unless they were very solid plastics.

In the same paper columnist Sam Leith observes; “The political necessity of being seen to do something in the wake of a terror attempt means security rules are always out of sync. We wait for something we know was possible to be attempted, then panic about it. We're like public-health programmes vaccinating against last year's strain of flu.”

Philip Baum, editor of Aviation Security International, said scanners were not the only solution and profiling passengers was, in fact, the best way to prevent terrorist acts. "We've got to face the fact that you can build a bomb in the duty free shop, after you've gone through screening. Bearing that in mind, we need to look at what people's intent is, not what they are carrying on their person."

Altogether with the questions over whether these scanners really work there is the question of knee jerk reactions to yesterday’s problems. The only really effective form of Airport security (ask El Al and the Israeli’s ) is that based on profiling rather than installing expensive equipment and creating nightmare queues for families with children, elderly, disabled and frequent flyers to go through. Of course the big disadvantage of this only proven secure method of protecting planes, airports and passengers is it can’t be carried out by scarcely trained outsourced minimum wage staff?

TAKE A LOOK AT THIS VIDEO TO SEE WHAT THESE SCANNERS ARE REALLY LIKE

(U)Ryanair

The Mouth of the West

Checking into Ryanair Flight FR118 at Dublin to London Gatwick the other evening I noticed a familiar face in the security line in front of me at Dublin Airport. It was none other than Michael O’Leary the outspoken Chief Executive of Ryanair, widely known as “The Mouth of the West” in Ireland. I asked him where the bodyguard was and he smiled and said he could look after himself. I don’t doubt it and there he was going through the ordinary line in jeans, check shirt and leather jacket having his luggage x-rayed with all the other passengers. The flight to London he was on (he sat in the front row and was first off the plane) had a number of innovations, namely it was enabled for mobile use in the air at “only” £3.00 a minute and you could get a “Ryanair Flame Grilled Cheese Burger” for only 9 euros. Strangely I resisted both temptations and the Sage’s zero purchase on Ryanair policy was maintained.

Now Ryanair gets a lot of knocking copy (sometimes from me) but those of us with longer memories remember what a restrictive cartel European air travel was before Ryanair. BA and Aer Lingus operated a cartel on the Dublin / London route and charged £230 return for a trip 20 years ago. Cheap fares could only be bought with stupid restrictions like being re-endorsed by a travel agent (What! Why!) for the return leg which led to British Airways stranding me in Dublin for 3 days and don’t even get me started on how exploitive Aer Lingus was with its so called “Compassionate air fares” designed to "help" customers travelling for bereavements or family emergencies. I remember in 1987 when Dublin / Oslo cost £564 (£2,000 in today’s terms) and Dublin / Geneva cost £380 in 1976. What a contrast when In 1999 I flew London / Lubeck for £5.00 return all in and laughed when I saw Ryanair fly in with a plane with “Aufwiedershen Lufthansa” on the side. Well, nobody is laughing today as Ryanair is the biggest and most profitable European airline with 170 Boeing 737-800’s in the air.

So I do admire what Michael O’Leary has achieved and his simplification of the business model and operation will be thought to Business Course drones for many years to come, no doubt to O’Leary’s great amusement. However Michael has the same problem as Oliver Cromwell had in Ireland, he doesn’t explain his mission too well and sometimes he revels in going too far. For the next morning he was at it again, pissing off his customers, if you’ll excuse the pun; “One thing we’ve looked at in the past and are looking at again is the possibility of maybe putting in a coin slot on the toilet door so that people might actually have to spend a pound to spend a penny in the future,” Chief Executive Officer Michael O’Leary said in a televised interview with the BBC. His comments were confirmed by the carrier.



Ryanair may charge passengers to use toilets on its planes, adding to fees already imposed for beverages, stowed baggage, airport check-in and preferential boarding. Ryanair generates about 20 percent of revenue from so-called ancillary income, the money it makes aside from ticket sales. The Dublin-based company this month introduced technology allowing passengers to use their own mobile phones on aircraft.

Mr O'Leary said this would not inconvenience passengers travelling without cash. "I don't think there is anybody in history that has got on board a Ryanair aircraft with less than a pound," he added. "We're all about finding ways of raising discretionary revenue so we can keep lowering the cost of air travel."

Mr O'Leary has a reputation as a cost cutter, expanding Ryanair by offering low headline fares and charging extra for items such as additional luggage. The move has been criticised by air passenger groups. James Freemantle, industry affairs manager at the Air Transport Users Council, said while they supported some charges to drive down ticket prices, a lavatory fee was a "step too far".


One pound to spend a penny?

He said: "There's a limit on these extra charges and they shouldn't be putting them everywhere." Ryanair spokesman Stephen McNamara said: "While this has been discussed internally, there are no immediate plans to introduce it. Passengers using train and bus stations are already accustomed to paying to use the toilet, so why not on airplanes?" True but they don't pay ON trains and once asgain Ryanair is not thinking how this would impact on older and disabled passengers and families or indeed the dignity of all passengers - I pay to travel, not to enjoy ritual humiliation? Last week, Ryanair announced it was to shut all its European check-in desks by early next year and have passengers check-in online.

Now Michael O’Leary has the same weakness as Oliver Cromwell had, he is very bad at bringing the public with him for the simple reason that he is too confrontational and travelling with Ryanair can become a hassle filled obstacle course with the carrier waiting in a predatory manner to bite your bum financially! The result is it alienates a whole section of passengers, including older flyers, those with children and those who have impaired mobility. Other carriers do it differently, for instance, if you miss an Easyjet Flight and are at the airport within two hours they will put you on the next flight for £40. By contrast I have seen a Portuguese family at Stansted when they missed their flight by minutes because the so called Stansted Express had a signal failure being in tears after being quoted £220 for a one way leg to Oporto on the next Ryanair flight.



Similarly toothless regulators have allowed Ryanair to laugh in the face of British and European Disability legislation by playing “trick or treat” by only allowing 4 people with mobility impairment or special needs on each flight, and these have to contact an impossible to contact Call Centre (at a cost) the same day and take the risk of being bounced off the flight. 10% of the population is in the mobility impaired category but 4 out of 186 seats on a Ryanair plane equates to 2.15% availability of seats for these vulnerable people. Altogether apart from the moral and legal equations it makes little sense to turn your back on such a large pool of customers. So Michael stop doing a Cromwell and work on making the Customer Interface less confrontational and more friendly and inclusive. Who knows the Business School drones of the future could be doing a module on how Ryanair transformed its image, rediscovered its customer and became “The Friendly Skies of Europe.” Not a bad way to go in a recession?

Ryanair on December 2nd. 2008 raised its net income forecast for the year ending March 31 to 50 million euros, saying the falling price of oil has more than compensated for the lower fares it’s offering to stave off a traffic drop. Passenger numbers rose 11 percent in January from a year earlier. Ryanair was trading up 15 cents, or 0.5 percent, at 3.02 euros as of 12:26 p.m. in Dublin. The stock has added 1.5 percent this year, giving a market value of 4.44 billion euros.

See also; “Ryanair, The European Airline?”

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/08/ryanair-european-airline.html