Shoe bomb. The year is 2001. September eleventh came and went three months ago, and tensions are higher than ever before regarding air travel. But that doesn’t stop everybody.
Enter Richard Reid. A British born man, recently radicalized by his time in Pakistan and training in Afghanistan, and about to take a fateful step. Two hollowed out shoes, packed with plastic explosive to be smuggled aboard and detonated once in flight.
Reid’s first attempt was a failure. His dishevelled appearance and lack of luggage for a transatlantic flight gave airport security pause. They deferred him and after further review he was admitted to fly the next day. They never detected the bomb in his shoe.
Once they were in the air the flight attendant was alerted to the smell of burning coming from within the cabin. She located the source: Reid attempting to light a match. She informed him that he wasn’t allowed to smoke on the …show more content…
The bomb never went off. He couldn’t light the match fast enough. Maybe it kept going out because of the pressure in the cabin. Or maybe he was more afraid of dying than he was of getting caught. Either way his shoes were confiscated.
Failure to detect the explosives in an attempted terrorist’s shoes put airport security into overdrive the world over. Security measures were innovated, new checks invented, anything to prevent something like this from ever happening again. The first order of business: check passengers’ shoes.
Anybody who has gone through airport security at least once knows the true inconvenience this attempted shoe bombing created. Whenever going through airport security from now on, the shoes must come off. Passengers are condemned to shuffle uncomfortably in a line, suffocated by each other’s foot odor, discoloring their socks, and leaving sweaty footprints. A humiliating and miserable start to the long arduous process of air
Enter Richard Reid. A British born man, recently radicalized by his time in Pakistan and training in Afghanistan, and about to take a fateful step. Two hollowed out shoes, packed with plastic explosive to be smuggled aboard and detonated once in flight.
Reid’s first attempt was a failure. His dishevelled appearance and lack of luggage for a transatlantic flight gave airport security pause. They deferred him and after further review he was admitted to fly the next day. They never detected the bomb in his shoe.
Once they were in the air the flight attendant was alerted to the smell of burning coming from within the cabin. She located the source: Reid attempting to light a match. She informed him that he wasn’t allowed to smoke on the …show more content…
The bomb never went off. He couldn’t light the match fast enough. Maybe it kept going out because of the pressure in the cabin. Or maybe he was more afraid of dying than he was of getting caught. Either way his shoes were confiscated.
Failure to detect the explosives in an attempted terrorist’s shoes put airport security into overdrive the world over. Security measures were innovated, new checks invented, anything to prevent something like this from ever happening again. The first order of business: check passengers’ shoes.
Anybody who has gone through airport security at least once knows the true inconvenience this attempted shoe bombing created. Whenever going through airport security from now on, the shoes must come off. Passengers are condemned to shuffle uncomfortably in a line, suffocated by each other’s foot odor, discoloring their socks, and leaving sweaty footprints. A humiliating and miserable start to the long arduous process of air