Nowadays, a notable airport is no longer defined by the state
of the art design it represents, high class services it has to offer, or its
level of crowd. More than that I define a notable airport is an airport that pursues
every effort at any time to make sure that people are safe going through it. Of
course this is highly anecdotal and experience-based bias, but making an
airport, not only safe but extra safe from terrorist attack becomes very expensive
to guarantee, and apparently only few places can afford to do so as far as I have
experienced myself.
The idea of this entry came into my mind when I saw news
about Brussels attacks yesterday. It came to my mind as I have been conditioned
to believe that European and American airports should outdo any airport at its
class to top the safety rankings. But I feel like a small airport in my country
is the safest one. One, it is because terrorists might not even know whether it
exists; it only has five flights every day from and to just three different
foreign destinations.
That is not my comparison in here though. From Dulles,
Washington, JFK, NYC, or O-hare Chicago, or airports in Asia, I have not seen
peculiar security checks until at the Ben-Gurion airport, Israel. This is where
I saw how they do everything they can to increase the probability of safety
confidence. I thought using conventional way of screening people like
interviewing passengers at the boarding gate would be irritating. Not to
mention screening people based on racial profiling would be so discriminative.
However, people live with it.
I somehow experienced myself of profiling. I thought I was not
really welcomed in that place, that I would like to fly back home immediately by
a magic carpet of Aladdin. I even heard a New Yorker standing behind me wowing
the security check mechanism that he told me he has never seen anywhere in the
States. That is because he saw the two airport guys unloaded two Europeans’
huge suitcases at the security check-in gate and screened the piece by piece of
every object in it. “What a work,” the New Yorker told me.
But I came to realize that for the common safety, some
individuals need to sacrifice their rights, freedom, and egoism. That is why I
did not complain of anything although I was treated in a way I felt it was
discriminative or too much. I would also think that it is very expensive for
some individuals to accept when they are treated differently as they are used
to. And that is the time their common safety is at a stake.
Although I feel like the peculiarity I have seen might result
in a meaningful impact why Ben-Gurion airport holds a tittle of one of the
safest airports, I feel like there is no way other than peaceful humanity can
prevent such things to happen more frequent. When human beings can be more inclusive
and tolerant, we will not need such extra security checks to feel safe.
**Hopes this gives you an inspiration
