Fireworks. Medical needles. Insect spray. Cooking fuel. Flammable gas torches. Ammunition. Yes, people forget they have cooking fuel in their travel bags. Or, amazingly, they thought it was acceptable in the first place to take cooking fuel onto an airplane.
So what happens to all that bizarre crap security screeners have to confiscate? It doesn’t just disappear, after all. Turns out a mammoth defense contractor you’ve probably never heard of called Science Applications International Corporation gets paid a lot of money to dispose of it. They just won a contract worth $46.8 million for that very task from the Transportation Security Administration.
But unfortunately, the trade pub Government Security News had some difficulty getting the whole story:
SAIC, which was awarded a contract valued at $46,806,079 on Dec. 19, 2011, declined an opportunity to be interviewed by Government Security News on its plans to execute this contract.
Airline pilots are widely seen as having some of the best jobs in America. In reality, pay for pilots has been on the decline for years.
Recent salary records show that a rookie first officer on a regional airline flying out of San Francisco International Airport may be paid less than the worker who washes the airport’s windows.
First officers, sometimes called co-pilots, are second in command on commercial aircraft.
On regional airlines, their starting salaries range from about $20.50 to $29 per hour. That is significantly less than the skipper of a passenger ferry on San Francisco Bay, records compiled by California Watch show. Some earn less than toll takers on the Golden Gate Bridge or California state prison nurses.
Pilots for regional airlines “are paid considerably less to work more hours,” says Brandon Macsata, executive director of the Association for Airline Passenger Rights, an independent organization of air travelers. “And it brings up safety concerns.”
It’s the busiest airport in the world. Well, if you’re judging by the ratio of federal security screeners to actual airline travelers. Just one Alaska Airlines flight departs each day from the small Gustavus Airport in Alaska, and that flight, like every other into and out of the United States, must be kept safe from terrorism.
The Transportation Security Administration awarded a $40,000 contract this month for the task of carrying four airport screeners daily to the far-flung Alaska town of Gustavus, population 346. For 77 summer days in a row, the company Wings of Alaska based in Portland, Ore., will fly TSA officers to Gustavus from nearby Juneau, a 25-minute trip.
Even the most unlikely targets of Al Qaeda have the TSA’s ubiquitous blue uniforms present. So that plan to get away from it all won’t mean escaping every headache of modern civilization. At least the lines will be shorter.
Image: mcgeez
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