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I had a brief (very) Twitter exchange with a fellow blogger this weekend in which I, half-jokingly, suggested that anyone attempting to take fireworks on to an aircraft should be placed on the no-fly list for stupidity (if I’m honest I’d also like to see these people banned from voting but that’s a whole other issue) and this got me wondering…can we penalize people for inconveniencing fellow travelers?
The fact is that there is an ever-increasing number of people who choose not to engage their brains when traveling and they don’t seem to care who this inconveniences….so perhaps we should inconvenience them.
If you park your car somewhere where it obstructs other road users you’re likely to get a ticket/fine and, if you do something particularly stupid on the road, you’re likely to get a ticket/fine and some points on your licence….so why not introduce something similar for air travel?
I’m not suggesting that someone who has forgotten a bottle of water in their carry-on should be fined or penalised as they pass through airport security – we all make small mistakes – but I’d like to see some sort of penalty system for people who have clearly checked their brains along with their hold baggage.
We could have a system similar to one used for drivers whereby passengers get fined and get points on their passports/ID each time they do something that causes unnecessary hold-ups for other travelers. Once a predetermined point limit has been reached the passenger loses the right to fly….maybe then they’ll learn to be a bit more thoughtful and considerate of their fellow passengers.
We could start off small….say 1 point and a $20 fine for a traveler who tries to take half of Macy’s cosmetics department through security. The fines could rise to something like 3 points and a $100 fine for anyone who gets to the screening machine and then has to spend 5 minutes rummaging around in their bags trying to find the 15 things they’ve packed that need to be placed in a separate tray…..and then still sets off the scanner with the three sets of keys, mobile phone and coin collection they still have in their pockets.
Passengers who have to be paged over the public address system because they’re holding up a departing aircraft could receive something like a $200 fine and 6 points (as long as they weren’t connecting from a delayed flight….that’s not exactly their fault) while the ultimate sanction ($500 fine + 12 points = 6 month flying ban) could be reserved for the geniuses that try to take obviously illegal items through security (fireworks, weapons etc…) or who singlehandedly delay a flight.
I’m not saying this is a flawless system and I fully admit it would have a lot of implementation issues….but it would be fun to see it discussed 🙂
Just think about it…..wouldn’t you feel a little better knowing that the person who delayed your flight (because they got drunk in the lounge, never made it to the gate and their bags had to be found and removed from the aircraft) had to pay $500 and was banned from flying for 6 months? I would!
Ok…I know this is never going to happen and I’m sure I’ll get emails calling these ideas draconian…but there is a serious point under all of this.
There are too many people in this world who really don’t care what repercussions their actions have on their fellow travelers and who never seem to stop and think if they may be needlessly inconveniencing a lot of other people for their own selfish ends….and I’d like to see them get their comeuppance.
By their nature these aren’t the sort of people who learn from a gate agent reprimanding them or from a TSA officer making them go through the scanner for a fourth time…so what can we do? Answers in the comments section please 🙂
