A day in the life of No Luggage Atoll

Because of a foiled terrorist threat, British Airways has solved the problem of stowing carryon luggage, temporarily at least. All carryon is (or was, depending on when you read this) banned on flights from the UK to the US. CNN's reporters are trolling Heathrow interviewing would-be passengers who have been there all day, as flights have seen, in the phrasing of the delightful British, slight delays.

American airports are enforcing bans which one may assume reflect the nature of the threat - the rumors are no magazines or books, no liquids (with some exceptions), and more. The link to these changes is at http://www.tsa.gov/press/happenings/threat-change.shtm, but I am not sure how long that link will work; hopefully, when the threat goes away, so will the page and its restrictions. The prohibitions on the TSA page do not match the rumors, so it may be they are wrong, or they may be specific to flights departing the UK. I also heard a news report saying that no battery-powered devices were being allowed in carryon; again, this may be specific to the UK. Verify before you depart.

The speculation is that terrorists (reported by CNN to have British passports) were going to bring various components of a bomb on board, with the components spread among several terrorists, then assembled on the plane with the aim of bringing down several aircraft over the Atlantic.

During this latest crisis, I recommend two things. First, be prepared to move things from your carryon to your checked bags and give up having water or juices to drink on your fight, having your iPod to tide you over during the long, boring flight, and so on. Second, drop by this link "False Sense of Insecurity" which triggers the immediate download of a .pdf file and read it. Executive summary of "False Sense of Insecurity": Terrorists would rather have you in a panic than dead; the risk of death from a terrorist attack is vanishingly small, even taking into account the Twin Towers loss of life. In the US, 40,000 people die each year in auto accidents, and none have died as a result of terrorism so far this year.

My own take is that the authors are coldly correct: the risk is on a practical level negligible. There are, however, two factors in my analysis of risk: the odds and the cost. While the odds of dying in from a terrorist attack are extremely slight, the cost of losing on those odds is, for me at least, rather high. But I have a greater risk of dying in a car wreck, and I take that risk daily without thought, and so do all the members of my family. It is a risk we are all used to, and I suspect if terrorism continues, we will all grow accustomed to that risk as well.

ADDENDUM: Someone has mentioned weight restrictions on checked bags. If you are having to pack all your formerly carryon items into your checked luggage, you may run afoul of the new lower limits. See the previous post on that subject.

ADDENDUM II: From the Gatwick Web page:

The sentence "Liquids will be removed from passengers" is engendering speculation in some circles.

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