Yesterday I wrote about the tangible holes in airport security, but omitted the singular flaw that plagues all systems: human nature.
Two weeks ago, I arrived at SFO early enough that the gate attendant hadn’t arrived yet—the uniformed one, I mean. I soon noticed a man in plain clothes sidling up to the attendant’s computer. He unlocked it and accessed what appeared to be the first-class cabin list. After pressing a couple of keys, he slowly backed away, pulled out his phone, and began text messaging. About ten minutes later, he did it again.
I’m making this all sound very shady, and quite frankly, it was. Shifty eyes. Calculated movements. The works. Other people who were gathered in front of the counter noticed, too. Two couples said it was “probably nothing.” The last couple felt otherwise and told the attendant for the adjacent flight, who then went up to the man and said—I am not making this up—”Sir, if you are not an employee, please don’t touch the computers.”
In the same way Bush might say, “Now now Kim Jong, no nukes before dinnertime.”
Needless to say, this didn’t appease the worried couple, and it didn’t appease me. We marched right up to the most senior looking official in the area and demanded an explanation, but it was just someone selling egg salad. So we went to the lady at the front desk of the Admirals Club and spoke with her between salad bites. She listened to the story and concluded that it was “probably nothing,” but promised to have an official look into it. Fair enough.
This official, bless his federally subsidized heart, must have searched the entire airport, because when we left the Club, we realized she hadn’t asked what our gate number was, or what the man looked like.
See, here’s the problem: when we read about incidents later on, we smack our foreheads and wonder how the people involved could miss all the clues. When we’re in front of our computers at home, we make bold, swift statements like: “If it were me, I would have said something!” But the truth is that, in the here and now, and when the chips are down, we think and hope and want to believe that it’s “probably nothing.” Security systems need to make it easy and socially encouraged to bring the “probably nothing” stuff to light in a low-key way; nobody wants to be the one to make a mountain out of a mole hill.
And the guy? Just a flight attendant from another airport bumping himself to the top of the first-class upgrade waiting list against airline rules. He wasn’t trying to harm the other passengers, just screw them over. My faith in humanity is restored.
