Flights and Security - not just another MJ Airport Rant

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

This story has both aspects in it

1) To "help ease congestion" of flights, Bush authorized commercial planes to fly in normally-restricted military airspace.

2) Government testers found TSA missed bomb components when screening people and their carry-ons during several tests.

I don't know what's under the airspace restricted to the military, but I'm thinking perhaps we don't want bombs going off in those areas. What's your take?

[jgibson2[$]]

From the actual press briefing:

But what we're talking about is the warning areas that are off the coast of the East Coast of the United States. And this is special-use airspace that is joint use; it is normally used by the military all the time -- they're doing exercises out there. And we worked an agreement with them to be able to release this airspace back to the civilian market so that the civilian airlines can use this airspace during the busy holiday season, during this Thanksgiving season.

The airspace is usually reserved for military exercises and there is nothing but ocean under it. OK, probably a few ships. They're only releasing airspace above 24,000 feet for civilian commercial use. It also says that this airspace is frequently used by commercial air traffic when there is bad weather along the east coast anyway - so there is a history here.

The bomb thing, that scares me, but not as much as being on the highway Thanksgiving weekend.