Keeping the skies
safe from pilots

My husband, who flies for a major airline, was on an island-hopper somewhere in the Pacific last week. At one of the stops along the route, one of the other pilots on his flight was held up at security. His mustache trimmer, a device with a half-inch blade, was scrutinized, then taken away. (Apparently, one of the airport security workers needed to trim his or her moustache.)

Pat's colleague protested -- in vain, as usual. The pilots routinely are given more than their fair share of shakedowns by airport security personnel, as ridiculous as that seems. A determined pilot certainly doesn't need a moustache trimmer, nail clippers or even a pocketknife to take down a plane.

And anyway -- and perhaps ironically -- the Transportation Security Administration requires the cockpit of every commercial airliner to have a "crash ax." This menacing, potentially deadly tool looks just like the ones you see firemen using in movies and on television shows. It has a heavy, pointed piece on one side (heavy enough to smash through the windshield) and a razor-sharp blade on the other.

In fact, the blade is probably sharp enough to trim a pilot's moustache.

Nancy Christenson McNamee
nmcnamee@starbulletin.com

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