I know what you’re thinking:
“Holy cow, they still have airliner service in Somalia? They don’t even have a formal government over there!”
That’s pretty much what I thought too.
Apparently, at some point in November, a Somali man tried to board a Daalo Airlines plane that was flying from Mogasdishu to Dubai with a couple of stops along the way.
According to an Associated Press article published on Yahoo news, people in the know are saying that there are many similarities between the modus operandi of this Somali guy and that of the Nigerian guy that tried to blow up the Delta, I mean Northwest flight 253 on Christmas day.
The similarities are that both men had dry powder based explosives, syringes with liquids and wanted to blow up a plane.
It makes me think that this run in Somalia was a test for the eventual run in Detroit.
I wonder why the African Union military force stationed at the Mogadishu airport were able to get the guy before he boarded the plane while the Dutch and Nigerians couldn’t or wouldn’t.
Here’s the best, and most recent, picture I could find of the Mogadishu airport:
I wonder how the guys in Mogadishu figured out what was going on…
Photo credit:
Copy of a letter I sent to the TSA this morning:
I have just returned from Africa and believe it is urgent to report to you the following information. On December 14th, departing on a KLM flight out of Amsterdam at 11:00 in the morning for Dar es Salaam, the metal scanner at the KLM gate failed to detect a new metal hip that I had surgically implanted this summer. Astonishingly, when I immediately notified a male KLM representative at the KLM gate, I was hushed and ushered forward onto the flight. It was manifestly clear that timely departures were more important than security issues. I considered refusing to get onto the flight altogether until all the passengers had been removed and re-assessed for their risks to public security, but my more immediate concerns were that I would be arrested and charged with some civil disobedience in a foreign country.
Departing Dar es Salaam on January 14th, I was equally astonished when (1) the woman manning the scanner at the airport failed to detect a half bottle of water that I had forgotten in my carry on bag, but most importantly (2) although the scanner alerted security to the metal on my body, I was not searched at all, and simply ushered through to the airplane again.
I now understand that there is no such thing as airline security…..
I guess that’s where we’re at nowadays. Is “security” more important than on-time departure? It also begs the question, is what we have now really “security” or is it only the illusion of “security.”