Some airlines have been telling their passengers that new government security regulations prohibit them from leaving their seats beginning an hour before landing.

In this Blog, I try to talk about ethics, but from time to time it becomes difficult to talk about doing what’s right when it is evident that for some people knowing what to do in the first place is a problem.

Try this principle for behavior out for the Federal Government and its response to air crime.

Principle 1: I will not enact regulations in response to every lunatic action that occurs on a plane.

Millions of people fly each day. Some drink. Some have serious medical or mental problems. Some are merely rude. Some are just dum and some are stupid. You can rest assured that some of these people are going to do something illegal, foolish or just strange. At times, these actions will receive wide publicity in a 24 hour news cycle world.  

Last year a man tried some kind of destructive act on an airplane with the only effective result being his admission to a burn unit. What ever his intent, this is not effective terrorism. At least not until the government reacted. In the real world people are killed. Bad things happen. But in some imaginary world, apparently some want badly to live in, if we just have enough regulations we won’t have bad things happen.

So, one loon injures himself trying to harm an aircraft and the response is a set of regulations requiring passengers to stay in their seats an hour before touchdown? How does that work? If the next loon sets himself on fire 62 minutes before touchdown, do we make everybody stay in their seats for two hours before landing?

This isn’t four guys doing a special government project three times a year, these regulations will cover millions of Americans. We can get to the point where no one is allowed carry on luggage, are ever able to leave their seats, or fly in the first place. Why?

Regulations are a tool in crime prevention and encouraging good behavior. They have good uses and bad uses. Whenever you see rapidly multiplying regulations you have a new set of behaviors developing or no effective action is possible.

Here are the facts. We can create rules that will make it difficult for people to harm aircraft and the people flying on these aircraft. That’s it. One hundred percent prevention is not possible. You should change regulations from time to time to reflect changes in behavior. Absolutely. But there arrives a point at which you are either demonstrating that you feel you have to do “something,” or that you are frightened.

Neither one is impressive in any way. We don’t have to do something when it has no effect. We don’t have to live in fear, we have to accept some risks, some threats, some craziness, some evil. Life is not guaranteed ride. There are crazy people out there. Their individual acts should not drive policy. The collective threat drives policy.

Now let’s decide what regulations should be to be most effective against threats and enact and enforce those.

Let’s not enact regulations just because we can.

James Pilant