Region of Waterloo International Airport - YKF

[danbrotherston]

I don't know why this is insane...there are plenty of airports that use a bus as their transportation from the gate to the plane, this is no different, the gate is just really far away from the plane.

Specifically, far enough away from the plane that it has to travel through a non-secure area for most of its trip, leaving all sorts of room for stuff to happen that shouldn’t. It’s just not prudent. Not at all the same thing as a bus which never leaves the secure area.

But, as I said, airline security is mostly security theatre. We know this with certainty because (among other reasons) liquids are still restricted, approximately 20 years after there was a scare about binary explosives which turns out not to be a feasible terrorist plot. So adding the buses wouldn’t really make much difference.

I was thinking in terms of actually securing the planes, though, not implementing security theatre. Which implies that many things should be done differently from how they are. For example, all people entering the secure area, without exception, should have to pass through the screening checkpoint. Furthermore, even the people who work at the screening checkpoint should be rigidly split into inside and outside, with a wall separating those areas; the only holes in the wall should be the luggage screening tunnels and the metal detector gates. I remember once going through a checkpoint and watching a CATSA worker — or rather, a person wearing what appeared to me to be a CATSA uniform — just walk right around the checkpoint. Absolute insanity.

I also have heard that some airport workers don’t have to clear security; only the ones who go on the planes have to clear. If true, this is obviously insane, because it introduces a huge range of maintenance people, restaurant and retail workers, cleaners, and others who could smuggle things into the supposedly secure zone. Once I accidentally ended up riding an elevator to the secure zone. It was only because somebody in the secure zone called the elevator, and when the door opened to let them on they said I couldn’t get off there, but still.

I'm very much confused as to what you think "could happen" that the bus operator wouldn't notice. I think they'd notice if someone boarded the bus, and that's really the security risk they are concerned about.

The point is the bus would be the secure area, people are going to notice if the bus is compromised.

As for airport security, my partner actually worked in Pearson for a few years, she had a pretty high clearance...she could even enter the US zone...but to get that, there were extensive background checks that a normal passenger does not have to pass (she even had to send finger prints to the FBI). In fact, this really is the main way airports are actually secured...is by background checking the people who are there. And I believe this does work quiet well: terrorists--even those involved with large well funded plots--have never chosen to compromise security by infiltrating airport staff. As you say, the actual security apparatus that you see as a passenger is mostly theatre.