Another Healthwatch: Tourisim to the US of A
Bob Feigel
indefensible, here is yet another example of how the US of A is losing
and will continue to lose visitors (aka tourists) due to the
incompetence (aka arrogance) of US officialdumb:
http://www.latimes.com/news/la-me-airport14aug14,0,2966447,full.story?coll=la-tot-topstories
Anger at customs agency in LAX snafu
Aviation officials criticize the agency for its weak response to a
computer glitch that left 17,000 stranded.
By Ted Rohrlich and Tami Abdollah, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
August 14, 2007
Aviation officials criticized U.S. Customs on Monday for being
unprepared and taking too long to fix the weekend computer failure at
LAX that left more than 17,000 international passengers stranded for
hours in airplanes.
Accustomed to frequent, short-lived outages, customs officials said
they mistakenly believed their computers would be up and running
within an hour Saturday.
Then they made another mistake, aviation officials said. They
misdiagnosed the problem, deciding it involved high-speed
communications lines that link to the national law enforcement
databases used to assess possible security threats posed by arriving
passengers.
They called in the service provider, Sprint Nextel Corp.
But a technician did not arrive for four hours, aviation officials
said, and took three hours to determine that the transmission lines
were not the problem.
By then, the passenger processing backlog had spiraled out of control,
with thousands trapped in airplanes on the ground, even as more planes
were arriving.
"We're concerned about the slow response by customs," said Steve Lott,
chief spokesman in North America for the International Air Transport
Assn. Although "we understand that computer systems are not perfect,
the frustration is why customs had no contingency plan."
Michael Fleming, spokesman in Los Angeles for the U.S. Customs and
Border Protection agency, said agency officials worked as quickly as
possible.
"We did everything we could," he said. "We certainly weren't expecting
something of this magnitude. In the past, if we had a little glitch,"
the computers "came up right away."
That's what happened more than 24 hours later, when customs computers
crashed again. They were down for about 80 minutes late Sunday night
and early Monday for what officials said were problems unrelated to
Saturday's issues. They declined to provide details.
Fleming said he did not know about the delay in Sprint arriving
Saturday. "I know we contacted them."
He said Saturday's breakdown was the result of a hardware malfunction
that prevented access to the agency's local network. It was finally
pinpointed and fixed by agency employees and another computer
contractor nine hours after the system crashed.
Kathleen Dunleavy, a Sprint spokeswoman, said customs officials called
the company about 1:30 p.m., reporting that two routers were down.
Within half an hour, she said, technicians were testing the routers
from a remote location but concluded they were operating correctly.
About 4:30 p.m., as customs reported continuing problems, a technician
was dispatched. He arrived about 6 p.m. and by about 8 had concluded
the problem was not with the transmission lines but with the customs
agency's local area network. Sprint's time frame of events and that of
aviation officials differs slightly.
As planes began to stack up on the tarmac Saturday afternoon and into
the evening, airline and airport officials pressed customs to relax
its inspection standards and process passengers based on information
the passengers themselves provided.
But customs officials declined. "We can't risk our security for even
one traveler," Fleming said. "What if one was a terrorist?"
Meanwhile, Los Angeles International Airport officials discussed
defying the federal government and storming aircraft to rescue
passengers if frustration led to violence aboard the idling jets.
"We would have gone out and rescued those folks. . . and dealt with
the federal fine later," said Paul Haney, deputy executive director
for airports and security for Los Angeles World Airports, the agency
that operates LAX.
They settled instead for providing food, drink and enough fuel to keep
air-conditioning systems running, with customs' blessing.
Haney said customs notified airport officials of the problem about
half an hour after it started.
An hour later, when the system wasn't back up, airport officials began
setting up a crisis center, involving officials from the Los Angeles
Fire Department, Police Department, airport police, airlines and the
Los Angeles Unified School District, as they considered options such
as using schools to temporarily house incoming passengers who were
technically not allowed to set foot on United States soil.
They also discussed using airport hangars and bringing in portable
toilets, diverting airplanes to Ontario and Las Vegas airports, and
sending stranded passengers to the Port of Los Angeles for processing.
By 5 p.m., Haney said, officials decided passengers would be safer and
more comfortable staying on the airplanes "as long as we could ensure
airplanes had power and ground service companies and caterers could
access the planes."
Nearly 40 ambulances were on standby.
By 5:30 or 6 p.m., said James Butts, deputy executive director for the
airport agency's law enforcement and protection services, a customs
official told him that a Sprint technician had finally arrived.
Frank Clark, executive director of LAXTECH Corp., business agent for
the 43 international airlines that serve LAX, said customs officials
were "clearly displeased with that lack of timely response."
Butts said that by 9:30 p.m., a customs official told him they
realized the problem did not involve Sprint. The official told him
that it was believed to have been caused by a "defective router."
By then, Haney said, airport officials had asked the Federal Aviation
Administration to divert some incoming flights, but only two were
diverted. "I guess at the end of the day there's pilot discretion,"
Haney said.
Despite the glitches, most pilots wanted to land at LAX.
As the day dragged on, customs officials began deploying their backup
system, which was slower and involved setting up a limited number of
laptops for inspectors to use.
Officials said they were working on expanding the backup system.
Viraf Pudumjee, 46, of Palos Verdes, was flying back from Mumbai and
landed Saturday about 2:30 p.m., only to clear immigration about 9:30
p.m.
"Computer problems are going to happen, but the problem was the backup
system was nonexistent or inadequate," Pudumjee said.
The computer system was up and running again at 11:45 p.m. The
passenger backlog was cleared hours later.
--
"It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens." - Woody Allen
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wax-up and drop-in of Surfing's Golden Years: <http://www.surfwriter.net>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hyfler/Rosner
"Bob Feigel" <b...@surfwriter.net.not> wrote in message
> http://www.latimes.com/news/la-me-airport14aug14,0,2966447,full.story?coll=la-tot-topstories
>
> Anger at customs agency in LAX snafu
>
> Aviation officials criticize the agency for its weak
> response to a
> computer glitch that left 17,000 stranded.
>
> By Ted Rohrlich and Tami Abdollah, Los Angeles Times Staff
> Writers
> August 14, 2007
>
> Aviation officials criticized U.S. Customs on Monday for
> being
> unprepared and taking too long to fix the weekend computer
> failure at
> LAX that left more than 17,000 international passengers
> stranded for
> hours in airplanes.
I cannot believe the stupidity of the people involved in
this. I predict the world will completely fall apart as
more and more stupid, badly educated people enter the
workforce.
Excuse the old fart interruption,
Amelia
Brad Ferguson
<rel...@rcn.com> wrote:
I was struck by this bit:
> As planes began to stack up on the tarmac Saturday afternoon and into
> the evening, airline and airport officials pressed customs to relax
> its inspection standards and process passengers based on information
> the passengers themselves provided.
>
> But customs officials declined. "We can't risk our security for even
> one traveler," [Michael] Fleming [spokesman in Los Angeles for the
> U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency] said. "What if one was a
> terrorist?"
More than 17,000 people sit for hours while these clueless morons look
for the little man who wasn't there. And we're told again and again
that this is the best we can do.
Matthew Kruk
news:140820070954286699%thir...@frXOXed.net...
Some friends of mine in Canada avoid layovers/transfers in the U.S. when flying.
An ex-Australian friend of mine recently went to visit relatives and his
complaint was that the delay in Honolulu was longer than the flight from
Australia to Hawaii. He exaggerates ofcourse but found it a frustrating delay
nevertheless.
J.D. Baldwin
In the previous article, Terry del Fuego <t_del...@hotmail.com>
wrote:
> After the last time I flew, I realized that it was, in fact, the
> last time I will fly. The experience for me has become:
I'll more or less echo most of this, and add to the mix the various
reported and (I am sure) many more unreported cases of outrageous
abuses by "Security" people, flight attendants and other assorted
wannabe-tinpot-dictators who have just been *waiting* for an excuse
like "9/11" to get back at all the customers they have hated for so
very long. The kid who was "detained" for reading (in the waiting
area) a book with a bomb on the cover. The couple who were arrested
under USA PATRIOT for (allegedly) having sex under a blanket on a
flight. Etc., etc.
I know I can't avoid flying commercial forever, but I've set my
threshold so that it doesn't come up often. If I'm traveling from
Michigan to (say) Washington, DC, I'll just rent a car and drive. (It
only takes an hour or two longer, measured door-to-door.)
This summer when I had to go from Maine to NYC, I spent the night at a
hotel in Portland so I could catch the morning Amtrak run. It was
expensive (though the travel was paid for by others), it took all day,
and it involved a transfer between stations via the subway in Boston
... but being able to lean back and bask in the glory of my giant
"fuck you" to the airlines for the whole trip made it all worthwhile.
I got home from NYC on a private corporate shuttle, which is run more
or less the way the airlines were run forty years ago. Wonderful.
I know I've said this before, but I've been through immigration and
customs checks in something like 20 countries, including "uptight"
ones like China, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. The very worst foreign
experience I've had (Saudi) was probably still better than the average
experience I have when returning to the U.S., and that includes coming
back from freaking *Canada*. I love international travel, but the
whole thing is always soured for me because before I even leave, I
start in with the dreading of my return. Incompetent, mouth-
breathing, surly, arrogant fucks. I can only imagine the crap non-
citizens must put up with!
--
_+_ From the catapult of |If anyone disagrees with any statement I make, I
_|70|___:)=}- J.D. Baldwin |am quite prepared not only to retract it, but also
\ / bal...@panix.com|to deny under oath that I ever made it. -T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bob Feigel
magnanimously proffered:
>Excuse the old fart interruption,
>Amelia
Yesterday, my wife and I had lunch at a restaurant in town with a
small group that included a retired doctor, a nurse, a filmmaker and
the region's top criminal lawyer.
Earlier in the day I'd heard a news report on radio about an arrest
made the previous night and wondered about a term used in the report
to describe one of the many items the police found when they stopped a
stolen car - including a 'P pipe' for smoking crystal methamphetamine.
So I asked the lawyer and it turned out that everyone except I knew
the answer.
My question: "What is a 'point bag'?"
"God, Bob," said the lawyer, who's in his early 40's. "You're not very
contemporary. It's a unit of measurement for a dose of crystal
methamphetamine"
"Yeah," added the 30's something filmmaker. "You've got to get out
more."
"I knew what it means," piped in the retired doctor, helpfully. She's
in her late-70's!
"Me too," said the 46 year old nurse.
All I could offer in reply was, "Actually, I'm finding myself less
contemporary with each day I grow older ... which may not be a such
bad thing now that I think of it."
"Don't worry," said my wife. "I only knew what a 'point bag' is
because I read about it in the paper."
MGW
<t_del...@hotmail.com> scrawled:
> After the last time I flew, I realized that it was, in fact, the last
> time I will fly. The experience for me has become:
I made that decision a few years ago. The only reason I'm considering
making an exception is that I really want to visit friends 1500 miles
away who lost their teenage son this summer and I don't have the time
to get there any other way.
> Screw it. Never again. I rode Amtrak. It took 34 hours to get here
> and will take 35 hours to get back. But the seats are enormous (both
> side-to-side and front-to-back), the aisles wide, the bathrooms
> plentiful and (by American [sic] biped standards) the passengers
> approach decent public behavior. Helpfully, cell phone service is
> spotty throughout the trip. The scenery, though repetitive after a
> while, is stunning.
I took Amtrak on my last 2 trips to DC. When I factored in time
driving and parking at the airport, all the delays, etc., it wasn't
much longer and I was sitting in one comfortable place all the time.
Got a lot of reading and a little work done, pluls a nap. Amtrak even
has a "quiet car" (at least on the Northeast Corridor) where cell
phones and loud conversations are not allowed.
Unfortunately, it was also more expensive, but it was worth it.
--
MGW
I have yet to see a problem, however complicated, which when you looked at
it in the right way, did not become still more complicated. ~ Poul Anderson