Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!think.com!yale!bunker!wtm
From: shafer@skipper.dfrf.nasa.gov (Mary Shafer)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Re: Airport
Message-ID: <18520@bunker.isc-br.com>
Date: 10 Apr 91 04:55:29 GMT
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Reply-To: shafer@skipper.dfrf.nasa.gov (Mary Shafer)
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Fidonet: Blink Talk Conference

Index Number: 14645

In article <18515@bunker.isc-br.com> Carla.Campbell@f89.n129.z1.fidonet.org
(Carla Campbell) writes:

[A very sensible article about airport searches]

    JF> Are sighted people
    JF> asked to remove their
    JF> ear-rings or their glasses or
    JF> even their contacts?

   Yes, if they are large enough to contain metal which would set off the
   sensor and might possibly contain a hidden weapon, a sighted person would
   be asked to remove earrings, contacts, (??) or anything else-- or he/she
   would be subjected to a hand scan/search.  This is a safety issue, not a
   matter of personal independence, folks!

My husband, who wears bilateral leg braces is frequently patted down,
in a hand-search, after the portable metal detector discovers that the
braces are made of metal.

   At several hundred miles up in the air, I'd just as soon
   people weren't able to sneak aboard with things that make big holes in
   metal. Call me weird...

The highest any passenger airliner flies is 60,000 feet, which is only
about 12 miles in the air.  That's the Concorde.  Subsonic airliners
like the 747 only go to about 40,000 feet or about 8 miles.

Several hundred miles up in the air describes where the Space Shuttle
is, but I don't think that you have to go through a metal detector if
you're flying on it.  (There are enough hoops to go through in being
selected as an astronaut that they don't need anything more.)

--
Mary Shafer  shafer@skipper.dfrf.nasa.gov  ames!skipper.dfrf.nasa.gov!shafer
           NASA Ames Dryden Flight Research Facility, Edwards, CA
                     Of course I don't speak for NASA
 "A MiG at your six is better than no MiG at all"--Unknown US fighter pilot