John Pistole Quotes

Now we are using the body scanner to scan the pilots. They became the dangerous people of this country?

Of course, you always have to be concerned about hijacking. But with the measures that are in place right now, I'd say that probably the airways are as safe as they've been in a good number of years.

We want to be sensitive to people's concerns about privacy about their personal being and things, while ensuring that everybody on every flight has been properly screened.

I'm confident that the terrorists are aware that from the curb to the cockpit we've got additional security measures that didn't exist a couple of years ago.

I believe the public's confidence would be increased if the federal government took over the functions of airport security screening for all passengers.

Air travel survived decades of terrorism, including attacks which resulted in the deaths of everyone on the plane. It survived 9/11. It'll survive the next successful attack. The only real worry is that we'll scare ourselves into making air travel so onerous that we won't fly anymore.

The bottom line is how do we best provide for the security of the traveling public in light of a determined enemy who is adept at constructing well-designed, well-concealed devices which would not show up in a walk-through metal detector? We're trying to employ the best technology to identify any possible threat.

I don't like getting patted down and taking off my shoes at the airport.

I take four planes a week, honestly. You know, I am for intelligence screening.

It may be annoying, but the rash of hijackings by Connecticut WASP girls surely explains the time-consuming - but still somehow completely useless - examination of my personal effects. We all have to make sacrifices for airline safety.

If the security personnel do their job properly, they just might cause you to miss your plane, thereby possibly saving your life.

I flew on Air Force Two for eight years, and now I have to take off my shoes to get on an aeroplane.

After 9/11, new security measures not only added longer lines and earlier check-ins, but took away our privilege of carrying knitting needles or our favorite moisturizer on board with us. Although we want to be safe when we fly, in some ways it all just adds to the misery of our experience.

And so we try to address those concerns in every way possible, recognizing, again, in the final analysis, everybody on that flight wants to be assured with the highest level of confidence that everybody else on that flight has been properly screened, and including me and you and everybody.

The episode of the 'shoe bomber,' Richard Reid, has suddenly meant more feet being bared at airports than at the average Hindu temple. My solution has been to replace my customary lace-up Oxfords with a pair of slip-on loafers when I fly. Generals are always fighting the last war, and security screeners are the same.

Of course, we should all be aware of what we're packing in our carry-on luggage - anything that might be considered dangerous could be confiscated at a security checkpoint.

Being on a commercial airplane is actually one of the safest places you can be on the planet.

I fly every single week, sometimes up to four days a week, and I see incredible inconsistencies in TSA throughout our country.

Why do we go through all the nonsense with security at our airport? It's not because the Catholic Church is falling apart.

We have first lady Michelle Obama on the show tonight. As you'd expect, security's been pretty tight. On my way in I got five pat-downs, and that was just from Joe Biden.

You can't imagine a world, quite frankly, without a safe and secure aviation system. And so our job is to really focus on that, and what we need to do to keep it safe and secure.

With existing technology, we can enforce airport security without sacrificing our personal privacy.

We put people of concern on the watch list or the no-fly list, so we have a number of layers of security beyond the airport checkpoint. We gather as much information about a passenger as the law allows without profiling.

Why we cannot build a system like El Al to be proactive. Why do we have only to react? The shoe bomber - reaction? Take off your shoes. The Nigerian - the body scanner is a result of the Nigerian guy.

Despite living in this post-9/11 age of transnational terrorism, the risk of death during air travel has plummeted to the point where we now measure it in the 'per billions' of passengers.