I arrived at Liberty International Airport at Newark this past Sunday ready for a full day of travel back to school in the San Francisco Bay area after a fantastic winter holiday at home. I’ve just achieved Elite Access status with Continental Airlines because I fly so often, so getting my bags checked and going through security were easy enough. I was especially grateful for that after seeing the extremely long post-holiday lines.
It was an uneventful flight, so when I logged in to CNN.com that night, I was stunned to discover that just hours after my plane had taken off, my terminal, my airline, and parts of my home airport were completely shut down after an unidentified man walked unnoticed into the sterile side of the security process from the public side.
The CNN headline read: “Newark Terminal Locked Down; Search Continues for Man.” Everyone had to be re-screened and no flights were able to leave Terminal C Sunday night. I considered myself very lucky to have gotten out when I did.
But it still doesn’t make me feel very safe that there was such a major security breach at Newark, especially since this is the same airport where some of the 9/11 hijackers were able to get through security and bring down an airplane, also bound for San Francisco. You would think that Newark should be one of the safest airports in the world. Instead, someone was able to get through security unseen, and even worse, at this point, they still have not figured out who it was.
It was the second serious homeland security threat this past holiday season, the first being the planned terrorist attack on Christmas Day on a Northwest jet bound for Detroit. Because I fly often, and because I live in a country that should be more than prepared for any kind of terrorist threat, especially after 9/11, I should not have to feel the fear about flying that has been raised with this recent hullabaloo.
The other night, my Dad and I were listening to NPR, and an expert on terrorism was addressing the question of why terrorists seem to like to target airplanes. He explained that it’s because most people have been on an airplane for one reason or another, and if they haven’t, it’s likely that they know someone who has.
There’s also the attention factor. Any kind of major incident involving an airplane gets instant international attention, so if the terrorists want to draw focus on their politics, it’s a no-brainer for them. But it reveals a frightening inevitability about living in these times. For example, in my family alone, if I am not flying back and forth across the country to school, my Dad often flies for business. On the same day I went back to school, my sister flew to Florence, Italy, for an intersession program on art history.
And though most planes land safely, we also know that some don’t, including United Airlines Flight 93 that Todd Beamer of Cranbury was on when it crashed in Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001. We do know that he died a hero, exclaiming “Let’s Roll!” while trying to storm the cockpit with other passengers in an effort to gain control of the plane and prevent it from causing greater destruction. His son plays baseball in the same Little League division as my little brother. Though they have never been on the same team, they have competed against each other. It’s strange and scary to think how very closely connected we all are, especially in neighboring communities, and something like September 11 has a grave and spiraling effect on all of us.
Just the other night I was talking with my Dad about how the government should proceed after these incidents. We agreed that terrorism seems to be unavoidable on all accounts, and not just in Iraq and Afghanistan, but everywhere around the world. So how should our country address a problem that will most likely never go away, especially on top of all the domestic issues right now, especially the economy and jobs?
I know that a lot of money has been put into the Transportation Security Administration since September 11, but it seems that these recent security breaches have revealed major weaknesses. It is hard for me to understand how Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who is on the terrorist watch list and whose own father sounded a warning about him, succeeded in buying a plane ticket to freezing Detroit with no coat, no luggage, and no passport. With so many red flags that went unnoticed, you have to wonder what would happen if someone got through with only one of these red flags waving around. Meanwhile, we are spending millions of dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan and still not feeling very safe at all.
Some people are comparing the situation there to the Vietnam War, with no easy end in sight. Many people do not support the war in Afghanistan, and I agree that we should focus more on improving homeland security from a domestic angle, by beefing up safety here. My dad is always talking about how more needs to be done to make our ports safer, improve airport screening, and even concentrate on mass transit like the bridges, tunnels and subways in New Jersey and New York.
President Obama has been in office for a year now, and even though he had huge challenges from the beginning, now he has to act quickly to make changes with regard to our safety as a country. People are always going to need to fly. That includes me, my family, and anyone in our community, including the heroic Todd Beamer.
The next time I board my plane to come back home to Plainsboro, I don’t want to be afraid of flying. I want to feel like I can trust the system to protect me. Right now I am not so sure.
