Tag: 9.11.01
Post-9/11 Airport Security: Do You Know Where Your Dignity Is?
by Eric Weiner | 09.11.09 | 10:20 AM ET
On the intersection of place, politics and culture
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Yahoo! BuzzLinks We’ve Loved: The Post-9/11 Kindness of Gander, Newfoundland
by Michael Yessis | 09.11.09 | 9:39 AM ET
In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, several trans-Atlantic flights were diverted from their U.S. destinations to airports throughout Atlantic Canada. The hospitality and kindness of the town of Gander, Newfoundland, has become legendary. Here’s one story I loved, the Savvy Traveler’s 2001 tale of the passengers of Delta Flight 15 and the residents of Gander, who hosted them for “four long, yet special, days.”
Here’s our original blog post.
Interview With Rose Hamid: Flight Attendant, Hijab Wearer
by Andrea Cooper | 08.21.09 | 9:44 AM ET
Photo courtesy of Rose Hamid How does she navigate the tensions between her profession and her faith in a post-9/11 world? Andrea Cooper learns more.
A Trip to Battery Park City
by Rob Verger | 01.23.09 | 2:38 PM ET
I live not far from the Hudson’s shore in upper Manhattan, and on Friday last week after US Airways Flight 1549 ditched successfully in the river, I took the subway down to Battery Park City, where the plane had been secured at a pier. It was a sunny but cold day, and I wandered the area. It was quite a scene: the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Katherine Walker and police boats in the Hudson, emergency services equipment and personnel, and parts of the plane’s tail and left wing (seen here, in this picture I took) sticking up out of the water.
Remembering 9/11, Seven Years Later
by Jim Benning | 09.11.08 | 5:09 PM ET
We can’t let the day pass without noting the 7th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. In Washington, D.C., President Bush dedicated the Pentagon Memorial, which the Washington Post called “the nation’s first major Sept. 11 remembrance site.” Esquire looks at the slow-moving Freedom Towers project at Ground Zero.
Air Couriers: A Dying Breed
by Julia Ross | 11.12.07 | 10:45 AM ET
Veteran air couriers have no doubt been painfully aware of this for some time, but it seems the once-attractive budget travel option has all but disappeared. A story on MSNBC.com —and co-authored by World Hum contributor Alexander Basek —reports that air courier services are struggling to stay afloat, largely as a result of post-9/11 security restrictions and the growing availability of budget air fares. “Today, documents route seamlessly via the Internet, while physical cargo (and travelers with one-way tickets) are scrutinized more closely than ever,” the authors write. “Both these facts of modern-day life make for tough times at courier companies.”
Interview With TSA Chief Kip Hawley
by Michael Yessis | 08.03.07 | 12:08 PM ET
Today security expert Bruce Schneier posts the last piece of a five-part interview with Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for the Transportation Security Administration Kip Hawley. The TSA chief has taken some public flogging during his tenure, and perhaps in an effort to rehabilitate the TSA’s poor image among travelers, he traded e-mails with Schneier. For his part, Schneier asked some tough questions. His first includes this: “Can you please convince me there’s not an Office for Annoying Air Travelers?” Let us know if you think Hawley’s answers should cause us to drop or raise the World Hum Travel-Terror Fatigue Level.
Related on World Hum:
* Man Detained by TSA for Writing ‘Kip Hawley is an Idiot’ on His Clear Plastic Carry-On Bag
* Security Expert: New Passports Vulnerable to Cloning, Sabotage
* Passports and Privacy: Here Come the RFID Chips
A ‘Dry Run’ by Terrorists or TSA Confusion?
by Jim Benning | 07.26.07 | 2:48 PM ET
The threat of more terrorist attacks involving planes in the United States couldn’t be more real. Public trust in the Transportation Security Administration is obviously critical. Which is why new conflicting reports about those so-called possible “dry runs” noted in a recent a TSA bulletin are so troubling.
Tons of Goods Confiscated by TSA Equal Thousands for State Coffers
by Michael Yessis | 07.18.07 | 12:32 PM ET
We touched on this early last year, but who knew it would become a big bucks business? Turns out all those outlawed items TSA agents take from air passengers at security checkpoints have become a solid source of revenue for states. From a story by Paulo Prada in the Wall Street Journal: “Pennsylvania, which collects goods at 13 airports including New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, says it collects a total of 2.5 tons of TSA goods a month and that the items, sold on eBay, since 2004 have raised $360,000 for state coffers, as of June.”
Frommer: America’s ‘War on Tourists’ Waged with Red Tape
by Jim Benning | 07.16.07 | 7:56 AM ET
Foreign tourism to the U.S. is down 10 percent since 2000, costing the U.S. billions of dollars in revenue. Why? “The overwhelming consensus of the WTTC [World Travel & Tourism Conference in Lisbon] was that we have made it extraordinarily difficult for most foreign tourists to obtain visas for travel into the United States,” writes Arthur Frommer in Sunday’s Chicago Tribune. “In some countries, it requires several weeks simply to make an appointment to apply for such a visa at a U.S. consulate. Let me repeat that: Not only is the application process a time-consuming procedure, but it requires a several-week wait for an appointment to apply for the visa!” Now, he adds, further delays are being proposed. The nation’s inability to improve the system, he concludes, is a “catastrophic oversight.”
Flight Attendants’ Rep: ‘We’re Back to Pre-9/11 Passenger Attitudes’
by Michael Yessis | 06.11.07 | 12:35 PM ET
Translation: “[T]ension between airline employees and passengers is rising, and passengers are ruder and more volatile than in the past,” according to a USA Today story by Gary Stoller. Some statistics support the assertion. The Federal Aviation Administration “cited 1,738 ‘unruly’ passengers for illegally interfering with the duties of a flight crew during the seven years ended in 2006, or an average of 248 a year. From 1995 to 1999, there were an average of 198 per year,” Stoller writes. Reports of passenger misconduct from flight attendants and other airline workers to NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System are also high, according to the story, and could be higher because many employees are not aware of the system.
Overseas Travel to U.S. Down 17 Percent Since 9/11 Attacks
by Jim Benning | 01.23.07 | 1:48 PM ET
The cost to the U.S.? More than $15 billion in lost taxes and nearly 200,000 jobs, according to a study released today.
‘It’s Not Easy Being a Comic on the Airport Security Line’
by Michael Yessis | 11.29.06 | 7:46 AM ET
A couple weeks ago, Tom Irwin became the poster boy for comics frustrated by the Transportation Security Administration. Now Joe Sharkey takes another look at humor in airports through the eyes of comic Dan Nainan. “Mr. Nainan may have incessant travel down to an art,” Sharkey writes. “But he still worries a bit about those admonitions about making jokes. I mean, there’s no comedy club at Guantánamo.”
L.A. Comic vs. the Transportation Security Administration
by Jim Benning | 11.15.06 | 2:25 PM ET
Oh TSA, why do you seem to torment so many travelers, even funny people? U.S. Army veteran Tom Irwin, who performs the one-man stage show 25 Days in Iraq, had little trouble getting cleared to visit the White House last summer. But somehow, he wound up on the TSA’s security radar. As a result, the Los Angeles Times reports today, Irwin has had a tough time checking in for flights, encountering one mysterious and frustrating delay after another.
The 9/11 Anniversary: World Hum Looks Back
by Michael Yessis | 09.11.06 | 7:00 AM ET
Five years ago, on the morning of the terrorist attacks in New York City, Washington D.C. and the air near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, World Hum was barely four months old. I was living in San Francisco, and Jim was making his way through Southeast Asia. “This isn’t the way you’re supposed to feel when you travel abroad,” Jim wrote in Terror in America: A Letter From Thailand, which we posted the following day. “You’re supposed to be immersed in the exotic, pleasantly buzzed, delightfully lost, happily, if temporarily, in exile. You’re supposed to shuck off your old self, lose track of the news back home and try on an utterly foreign way of life.”
World Hum Raises Travel-Terror Fatigue Level
by Jim Benning | 08.11.06 | 11:05 AM ET
That’s right. Based on the recent foiled terrorist plot in England and the ensuing sighs from travelers around the globe, we’re taking the extraordinary step of raising the World Hum Travel-Terror Fatigue Level from Really Annoyed (level 3) to Totally Sick of This (level 4). For those keeping score, that’s just below the highest level on the World Hum Travel-Terror Fatigue Index, Enough Already. Don’t be alarmed. The index simply reflects widespread terror-fatigue levels among business and leisure travelers. While we’re obviously relieved the horrific plot was averted, we can’t believe our ginger-lime shampoo is now under scrutiny. (Remarked one frustrated but well-groomed female traveler on CNN: “I don’t think you can blow up a plane with blush.”) Let’s hope we can one day drop back to level one—Margaritaville. We can dream, right?
De-Politicizing the French Fry
by Terry Ward | 08.03.06 | 9:48 PM ET
Francophile that I am, I was glad to hear a short snippet on the NBC Nightly News yesterday evening mentioning a menu change on Capitol Hill. “Freedom fries” and “freedom toast”—so dubbed on congressional cafeteria menus when tensions rose between Washington and Paris during the looming invasion of Iraq in 2003—have quietly reverted to their original monikers, French fries and French toast. A USA Today blog noted that, back in 2003, Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, angry about France’s anti-war position, “wielded his legislative authority over the House cafeterias and mandated a change of menu, which had been suggested by Republican colleague Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina.” The blog goes on to say that there are no official comments from the hill on the decision to re-Frenchify the names.
Angelina Jolie to Star in Film About Daniel Pearl
by Jim Benning | 07.13.06 | 2:05 PM ET
According to Reuters, Jolie will play Mariane Pearl, the widow of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was murdered in Pakistan in 2002. The movie is to be based on Mariane Pearl’s memoir, A Mighty Heart. “I am delighted that Angelina Jolie will be playing my role in the adaptation of my book,” Pearl reportedly told Daily Variety. “I deeply admire her work and what she is committed to.” Daniel Pearl’s murder was also the subject of the book Who Killed Daniel Pearl? by French writer Bernard-Henri Lévy.
“United 93” Finds an Audience
by Michael Yessis | 05.01.06 | 10:25 AM ET
It turns out a lot of people are ready to see the tragic events of 9/11 played out on the big screen. United 93, which recounts the last moments on the hijacked flight that crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, finished second at the box office this weekend. “The doggedly fact-based drama grossed $11.6 million in its Friday-Sunday debut, per estimates from the box-office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations,” writes E!Online’s Joal Ryan. “Its per-screen average was even more impressive: $6,462—average-wise, no other major movie played to bigger crowds.”
“United 93”: Editors, Writers and 9/11 Family Members Speak Out
by Michael Yessis | 04.10.06 | 7:21 AM ET
The movie “United 93” opens in less than three weeks, and it’s certainly on a lot of people’s minds. Families of those on the flight that went down in a Pennsylvania field on 9/11 were given a private screening Saturday in Newark, New Jersey. Los Angeles Times writer Scott Martelle reports that the families lauded “Universal Studios and director Paul Greengrass for what they felt was a realistic re-creation of events whose true details can only be guessed at.” At Slate, the editors have posted an interesting internal e-mail discussion about the controversy over the “United 93” trailer, which at least one New York City theater pulled last week. Meanwhile, at Time, someone (I don’t see a byline) has written a story that covers several 9/11-related movies in the works, goes behind the scenes of “United 93,” and delivers another positive review of the movie.
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