Smoke On A Plane

This morning I noticed two letters to the editor in The Post about the diplomat from Qatar who was apprehended by air marshals after someone smelled smoke on an airplane, and he said he was trying to set his shoes on fire. The plane was escorted by fighter jets, 5,000 flights in the air were alerted about a possible 9/11-type attack, the whole thing was an international incident with repercussions still rippling around the world.

One of the letters to the editor suggested that airlines should not allow lighters on airplanes at all. The writer had had his Preparation H taken away from him, and so as an experiment he brought a lighter on another flight, and there was no problem, even though the writer "can think of at least a dozen ways to cause havoc aboard an airplane with a cigarette lighter." The other letter says "How do some Arab diplomats react? 'This never would have happened if Madadi was Swedish.' Won't someone please say it: Blond, blue-eyed Swedes aren't trying to blow up commercial airliners."

Everybody I know has the same opinion about this incident: the guy is an idiot. You don't smoke on planes, especially if your name is Mohammed al Madadi, and you don't joke about shoe bombs, especially if your name is Mohammed al Madadi.

In that light, I feel forced to point out the fact that "this" was nothing. A guy smoked a cigarette in an airplane lavatory and made a bad joke. Do we really need to take further steps to prevent "this" from happening again? Yes, he should have known all hell would break loose if an Arab lit a match on an airplane, yes, he should have waited with the "I'm trying to light my shoes on fire" joke until he was on the ground and hanging with his friends. But look what this incident says about us, that even though we know it was nothing we are treating it as if it were a major national security breach. We are so breathless about what it "could have been" that we are apparently incapable of recognizing the truth, that it wasn't what it could have been, it was what it was. A cigarette and a bad joke.

What we need is a security process that distinguishes between actual threats and guys who need their nicotine at thirty thousand feet. But as long as the public goes along with this sort of security theater, this is what we're going to get. You want to clutch your pearls, the TSA and the press are happy to give the country pearl-clutching stories. You want to be safe, sorry, the country has to get over it and see things for what they are.