How safe is the cargo on passenger flights?

Not particularly news to anyone here but good that the gaping hole in airliner cargo is being exposed. Could be a lot shorter for the average ADD American reader though.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/16/travel/cargo-terror-concerns/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

 

Why should the TSA worry about screening cargo? The traveling public does not see the guts of baggage handling areas, so let's just play act with 9,000 VIPR operations a year.

 

This one TSA has yet to explain as to why the SLF is raped to know end but a WMD can be loaded in the belly without as much as a rat sneeze or second look.

 

There's no ego stoking or personal gratification over asserting dominance over baggage nor can baggage be socially conditioned, also baggage and other inanimate objects cannot successfully convinced/scared, at least not on a consistent basis, that being swindled is for their own safety.

 

Yes, but there is the fringe benefit for TSA employees being able to supplement their income by selling stolen items from checked bags on eBay.

 

Air cargo is is not checked baggage, and it's probably a lot less interesting, e.g. we receive lots of circuit boards from Thailand for which there is no secondary market. Once it's been checked it would go into a container, not make a trip to the tarmac on a conveyor belt where it can be rifled through before loading.

 

A few weeks ago the TSA levied a a record setting fine against a cargo operator. An Adfero Group blogger noted this:

Somebody's in for a rude awakening, since he seems to forget the arrogance displayed by the TSA after one of their employees damaged a number of American Eagle aircraft in 2008.