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Sen. Rand Paul Introduces TSA Reform Legislation
OverTheGeicoE writes "Over a month after Sen. Rand Paul announced his desire to pull the plug on TSA, he has finally released his legislation that he tweets will 'abolish the #TSA & establish a passengers "Bill of Rights."' Although the tweet sounds radical, the press release describing his proposed legislation is much less so. 'Abolition' really means privatization; one of Paul's proposals would simply force all screenings to be conducted by private screeners. The proposed changes in the 'passenger Bill of Rights' appear to involve slight modifications to existing screening methods at best. Many of his 'rights' are already guaranteed under current law, like the right to opt-out of body scanning. Others can only vaguely be described as rights, like 'expansion of canine screening.' Here's to the new boss..."
Back in the 90's we still had metal detectors and screeners would use the wand if it went off
That's the main problem here... the Federal government offered up "free" security services to airports, what else were they going to do? Now we seem to be stuck with the stellar service that is the TSA - government managed security theater.
Get rid of it. Problem solved.
I fly around the world on a regular basis. There is one thing that every single foreign airport I have ever flown out of shares in common: a lack of security theater.
From Mumbai to Istanbul, Narita to that tiny little airport on the island next to Toronto, I never have to:
1. Take my shoes off
2. Submit to a body scanner
3. Suffer a pat-down
4. Wait more than ten minutes to get through security
Flying within and out of the US is slower, more difficult, more humiliating, than flying through airports where terrorism is ACTUALLY a common threat. I am embarrassed every time a foreigner has to deal with my country's ridiculous soap opera of security, and simultaneously enraged when the outside world reminds me that, outside of the US, flying is a wonderfully pleasant experience from start to finish.
I don't really have a new or insightful point here other than to vent, to be honest. It's deeply frustrating to see the ludicrous amount of money we've spent on body scanners that are not only trivially fooled, but simultaneously don't catch anything actually dangerous a metal detector wouldn't have already caught and still require me to take my god damned mother fucking shoes off. Security is worse, yet somehow takes longer. I have to choose between a ridiculous body scan or an intrusive physical search in my own relatively safe country, but can travel in comfort everywhere else.
It's maddening. I avoid flying as much as possible literally because of the TSA. It's a sad state of affairs when a 12-hour train ride (which, mind you, costs MORE than a flight) is an attractive option to dealing with airport security.
It's maddening to the point that I supported Rand Paul's original initiative to ban/reform the TSA. Rand Paul is a lunatic, yet I dislike the TSA so much that he and I agreed on this one issue.
So now, it turns out, he doesn't want to do what he'd said at all. His proposal address NONE of the things that madden me so, and in many cases make them worse. Privatized security theater is no better than public security theater. The THEATER part is the problem, not the public or private part.
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He is saying "Yo big government, keep your hands off citizens". Getting groped by private screeners (punny) is totally more liberating than when done by TSA agents.
I fly around the world on a regular basis. There is one thing that every single foreign airport I have ever flown out of shares in common: a lack of security theater
It's amazing how easy it is to spot Americans in foreign airports. They're the ones who are taking their shoes off at the x-ray machines while everyone else is walking past them.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Nothing speaks of liberty more than a shift from government agency to a private agency. Why waste taxpayers' money on TSA when we can spend double the tax money and get groped the same way by "private screeners"?
No. Libertarians object to the government doing anything because it's necessarily based on initiating force. Non-initiation of force is the ideology, no government is the logical conclusion.
By advocating for a government run X, you are saying that you are willing to throw me in jail for not agreeing to fund X. Do you really expect anything positive to result from this paradigm? Should not all social interactions be voluntary?
"But how will we manage the roads without the government!?" - without the initiation force; that's how. Can't be done without force you say? well that's just a limitation of your imagination, not objective truth.
His proposal is to change virtually nothing. Pretty much the same security theatre, but performed by the private sector rather than the public sector. Pointless.
It was also legal for pilots to have guns with them.
B-b-b-but... his last name is Paul, and his first name starts with an 'r', so it must be good for the country right? RIGHT!?
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
No more security.
Put the doors to the cockpit on the OUTSIDE of the plane.
Give all passengers a large knife.
The plane WILL be going to its destination. guaranteed. any terrorists pop up in flight.. well. we have garbage bags.
Problem solved. Dirt cheap. And we can even reuse the knives.
Take off and landing is the only part the pilot plays now. Small matter of having remotely-flown jets if their hijacked. The plan becomes less clear, which results in a lot of spineless back-seaters not wanting to be responsible for the outcome of a decision, when you have someone claiming to have a bomb on board and want the jet diverted. Defy them, call their bluff and it goes off .. we won't hear the end of it for over a decade.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
In addition:
1. Remove the ability for the passenger compartment to talk to the pilots except for a single emergency button that informs the pilots that we need an immediate emergency landing at the nearest airport. Hijackers can't tell the pilot where to go and they can't even threaten to kill people to achieve that goal.
2. Upon emergency landing the plane is met at the gate by EMTs and police. Hijackers aren't given a chance to negotiate before police are expected to enter the passenger compartment. This makes it impossible for them to use hostages as a buffer against police entry. EMTs, of course, are in the much more likely case that the emergency is medical in nature.
3. Once the plane touches down for an emergency prevent it from starting back up unless initiated from an access panel requiring a physical key held by the airport or local police and a password in the middle of the passenger compartment requiring at least two officers to operate. This means that unless an authorized technician is allowed into the center of the passenger compartment the plane can't just be reloaded with a new pilot and take off after the hijackers have had a chance to talk to the police. They need to allow multiple actual police officers into the compartment to even get off the ground again.
Or, even better, just keep the locked cockpit door and make sure passengers understand that hijackers are more likely to kill you than let you go nowadays. This requires almost no changes to the plane...
This is Rand Paul, not Ron. Rand supports Mitt "Indefinite detention of Americans without trial" Romney for president, though he claims to be a supporter of liberty and the constitution. Here's to the new boss indeed.
He once inserted random mutations into his code, just so he could have the experience of debugging.
The TSA employs about 60,000 people. The number one thing that voters care about in the US is jobs.
The TSA will not be curtailed anytime soon.
Exactly; just take a look at the private for-profit prison industries.
If you have to have a government service, and there's no way to make it competitive, it simply makes more sense to have the government do it outright. There's no way to make the TSA's job competitive; it's not like there's 5 different airports right next to each other that you can choose from if you don't like the screeners at one airport. By having the government do it directly, it's more answerable to the people than a private company is. However, as in the case of the USPS, it does sometimes make a lot of sense to have the function done not by a government agency, but rather by a government-owned and managed corporation, so it's not subject to as much politicization. But for the TSA, I don't think that's such a good idea; it really should be more like the FBI or police departments.
Of course! How could he possibly be informed AND disagree with your point of view? Must be a piece of shit socialist.
There is no memory shortage. yes I have heard of XFCE. Go away.
Yup. He's just generally morally bankrupt.
Because remember this: when the government privatises critical services (and the TSA is most certainly deemed critical), the services still need to be "provided". With the extra overhead of making shareholders rich.
Because nothing will go wrong with private armies of people mandated to stop and search you...
So what is wrong with current situation. It is that the TSA is a symptom, not the cause. The cause is Homeland Security, a department, which this year is adding $3billion in deficient spending over what it has been adding all the years since Bush decided that bigger government was the way to go. If we want smaller government, Paul should be giving us legislation to get rid of the DHS, putting the duties into other departments. He should get rid of medicare part D. He should stop the department of education from doing anything but reference curriculum and grants for innovative local teaching ideas. This would be smaller government and real savings. But instead he will continue to attack workers and pretend to care about the people.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
You clearly don't understand a word about what you think you do.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
LOL, you think you're going to be able to choose among competing pat-down companies? You'll have as much choice as you have in your (privatized) electric company, your (privatized) trash service, and, I bet, your (privatized) cable company.
Privatization simply means your money is being funneled into the pockets of a company rather than government workers.
Just ask any blacksm...
Oh.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Private security weren't dicks usually because they were answerable to the airport authority for that airport, and they are want happy customers. So they'd keep the security people accountable.
That's the real problem with the TSA, other than their ineffectiveness, is they have no accountability. It is set up very well so that nobody is ever accountable for what they do. It doesn't have to be that way, not all government agencies are, but it is and that is a big problem.
Well and easy fix would just be to privatize it again. The accountability will be restored.
"The THEATER part is the problem, not the public or private part."
Unfortunately, the THEATER part is the whole reason for its existence. They never cared about your security. It was all about getting Americans used to taking orders from government.
My English teacher used to say that you have to know the rules of grammar before you can acceptably break them. Same thing with Barack and the constitution I guess.
He once inserted random mutations into his code, just so he could have the experience of debugging.
The opposite has happened in the private prison industry. Private actors with state power is the worst of both worlds.
Whatever private company gets the contract from the airport becomes an effective monopoly
The point is the airport could choose. Right now they get what they get, and if there are complaints well too bad.
Your comparison with trains sounds pretty idiotic too; did those different companies all run trains to the same destinations?
Yes, actually, they do. Have you ever BEEN to Europe?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
suing as the source of rights preservation
really?!
so rather than "evil" government regulations, it's far better to:
1. get abused
2. go through the litany of trying to get a lawyer to take your case, wait a long time to start a trial
3. wait a long time during a trial, because you don't have anything better to do with your time and money
4. maybe not get any satisfaction at all in the end, and now an expensive legal bill on top of your now public mockery of your misery, because you are outgunned in the courtroom by the corporation's legal goon squad
really?
the court of law is better than government regulation?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The number one thing that voters care about in the US is jobs.
Individually yes, but en-masse you'd find millions made happier having the TSA lose jobs and then locals having a shot at private security work.
There is scant love for government workers these days.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
thank you
there are plenty of things that should NEVER be privatized
healthcare insurance, for instance
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I also fly around the world on a regular basis. Perhaps not as regular as you, but security theater is alive and well around the ENTIRE world: Flew from US - Prague through Paris. Had to throw away the bottle of water given to me on the US plane when I landed in Paris. Flew from Brazil to Dallas to Home. Was carrying a suitcase of electronic gear ( a timing system) The security theatre in Brazil was worried I might use the blunt end of the small tripod as a weapon (but the rest of the electronic gear was ok) Not a peep was said when I went through Dallas. Leaving Ukraine? Had to prove my laptop worked. My large skateboard was ok to take on, but a fellow passengers 2 inch pocket knife went into the trash. Heathrow doesn't seem to require shoes off any more, but it did. Also they only allow ONE bag through security. Not one carryon and one personal item. But ONE bag. I've waited more then 10 minutes to get through security in a lot of countries.
I agree that paranoid US is worse than other countries. I don't know how many times I've been told to place my "liquids" into a ziplog bag AFTER I've been through security. But the US doesn't have a monopoly on security theatre
Pointless.
Unless you get the nice, juicy contract
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
1. it makes them immune to Freedom of Information laws, as they only apply to government and government agencies
2. eliminates the horrific waste of potential for profit and corporate welfare - it's never a good idea for a government to do something when they can pay corporations ten times as much to do a crappier job.
remember children: "Government Bad! Business Good!"
This is Rand Paul, not Ron.
Damn that Ron Paul!!
He should have named his kid Judas Paul, or Anti Paul, to make it easy for voters.
Nice try, but UPS and Fedex are prohibited from providing standard mail service by Federal Law. Go ahead, try to get a quote for a letter to be delivered in 3-5 days from anyone other than USPS. Sure, they'll give a quote for 2 Day Air, but the same service from USPS certainly doesn't cost 'pennies'.
On top of that, USPS is basically funded now by delivering junk mail to your door on an almost-daily basis. They also sell contact information of people who file change of address forms, in addition to the barrage of advertisements they subject people who file the form online to.
Plus, the mail is not a societal problem, if the USPS was shut down all that would happen is I would have to throw out all that junk mail.
On an on-topic note: if security were handled by private agencies they would be subject to state & federal law. Airports with security firms that were doing things like making a woman breast-pump in front of others would be pressured to fire those firms. Instead we have TSA agents who act as if no law at all applies to them.
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
Boogers -- my mod points just expired and you need someone to mod you up.
Anyway, here's another example. WA state used to have state run liquor stores and used the profit from those stores to fund state services, like fire departments and whatnot. Now, WA did have some of the higher booze prices in the nation, but we also don't have an income tax, so it used a "sin tax" in part as a way to make up the difference. The stores had a really nice selection too.
Here is the last price list the state published:
http://whatcomnewsforums.com/misc/washington_state_liquor_control_board-MAY_2012_PRICE_LIST.pdf
On June 1st, the first day of privatization, selection went in the toilet, and prices skyrocketed. Here's one example from page 6 of the price list for Red Breast Irish Whisky.
The state store price was $49.95 out the door.
The state retail price was $39.11
The wholesale price can be calculated (*): $25.66
Fred Meyer is currently selling Red Breast at a special price of $60 (reg is $65). This is pretax.
Many voters favoring the initiative stupidly believed that "competition" was synonymous with "lower prices," but I-1183 included a provision that wholesalers would have to pay a 10% fee, and retailers a 17% fee, to make up for the loss to the state from losing the stores. The Office of Financial Management, as required by law, evaluated the law and concluded prices would rise. This summary was even in the voter's pamphlet, but if many slashdotters can't RTFA, most voters only watch TV and totally bought the notion that competition and lower costs go hand in hand -- they never read more than the title let alone the summary -- just voted like the ads told them to.
Anyhow, starting with a wholesale price then of $25.66, after the wholesale fee, it would be $28.23, and after the retail fee, $33.03. The reg shelf price at Fred Meyer is almost a 100% markup, and even the sale price is an 81% markup, to which the old state taxes are added, making the out-the-door price of the bottle of Red Breast, $75.13 (on sale) or $81.16 (reg price).
Now, certain store brand rotguts are perhaps 50 cents to a buck cheaper than rotgut carried by the state stores, but anything decent is at 25% more expensive and some things are substantially more, Red Breast being about 60% (reg price). Worse, the profit the state would have used to benefit all Washingtonians, is now largely exported. It has been partly replaced by the new fees, but surely an initiative will kill those in the future and it is at that point, a WA income tax would become more likely. I'd really rather just decide whether to "sin" and pay a sin tax, than to have an income tax shoved down my throat every year.
So, this is an example where privatization costs the public much more in the short run, AND increases the likelihood of an income tax, which will cost the public much more in the long run. But Costco will make gazillions so its all good right? Corporate socialism is the name of the game now.
(*) WA markup was 13c for a 750 ml bottle, plus 51.9% http://liq.wa.gov/stores/liquor-pricing
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Top 5 Contributors, 2007-2012, Campaign Cmte
Alliance Resource Partners
$40,650
Koch Industries
$17,000
Mason Capital Management
$16,800
Murray Energy
$14,613
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00030836
Even more:
http://images.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/fecimg/?C00462069
YOU need to wake up to the fact he wants to turn everything over to unregulated corporations.
Do we need a 3rd party? yes. heel a 4th and 5th party!
That does not me we should blindly jump on board anyone who shows up as 3rd party. Since you are ignorant of who donate money to them, I don't think it's not too far of a stretch to say you are blindly jumping on his bandwagon simply because it's a new band wagon.
The question is: Have you rapped yourself so emotionally into the Paul's that you won't change your view in light of the new evidence?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The TSA was created in the aftermath of 9/11 attacks, with the reasoning that failures in airport security were at partly to blame for those attacks succeeding. But the reason the hijackers succeeded (or partly succeeded in the case of United 93) was because they exploited existing assumptions about what airline hijackers do.
Prior to 9/11, the primary purposes of a hijacking were to gain publicity and to use the passengers and crew as hostages. The terrorists would issue demands (usually for release of prisoners allied with them), maybe force the pilot to fly the plane around from airport to airport. Maybe (but not often) they might pick out a passenger belonging to a group they hated (members of the US military, or Jews) and kill him. But overall, if everyone cooperated, they'd come out of it alive, albeit after some miserable days or weeks -- TWA Flight 847 in 1985 being the archetypal example. This is the way the public perceived it, and it was the basis for official government policy: cooperate and negotiate, because the hostage are valuable to the terrorists. If the hostages are dead, the terrorists have nothing to bargain with, and the government has no reason not to go in with guns blazing.
Based on this, all the 9/11 attackers had to do was present the passengers and crew with a situation where the perceived risks of resisting were greater than the perceived risks of cooperating. Without the knowledge that their situation did not match the pattern and that cooperation would result in everybody being killed, a credible threat to the life of just one person would have been enough. The hijackers could have accomplished this with their bare hands by ganging up on a single vulnerable person (elderly or very young), holding him/her, and threatening to strangle them. No pilot was going to say "Go ahead, break the old lady's neck, the cops can arrest you when we land in LA." Having box cutters made things easier, but not having them (because airport security would have confiscated them) would not have stopped them.
The way people perceive the situation is different now, and indeed the perception changed during the hijackings, once the passengers aboard United 93 found out what what the hijackers actually intended. Now, a hijacking couldn't succeed unless the hijackers were heavily armed, because the assumption among everyone else would be that cooperation means dying.
My point here (sorry for the rambling) is that the assumption behind creating the TSA is "if we'd only had it on 9/11, the attacks would have been prevented", and that's not true. Likewise, if the 9/11 attacks were attempted using the same tactics today, they'd fail, TSA or no TSA.
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
OK, and for the rest of the country you suggest exactly what?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
...and call it liberty. Republicans are one trick ponies. Make a big deal about the government offering services, abolish those services and offer the contracts to their campaign contributors.
My kingdom for a donkey!
UPS and Fedex are prohibited from providing standard mail service by Federal Law ... Plus, the mail is not a societal problem, if the USPS was shut down all that would happen is I would have to throw out all that junk mail.
I respectfully call bullshit on your bullshit
It may be the case that UPS and Fedex are prohibited from providing standard mail service (I do not know). However, as I understand it, USPS is certainly forced to deliver mail everywhere, not just the well-populated and juicy areas. If you live an urban area, UPS/Fedex will step in to substitute for USPS. However, if you live in a remote village, you may notice that your letters will then cost $20 to deliver.
By having the government do it directly, it's more answerable to the people than a private company is.
Ooooh, yeah, TSA is totally answerable to people!
Did you read the response to a "Please abolish TSA" petition that was signed by ~37,000 people? Response written by TSA director and not even pretending. I.e. it didn't say "We understand your concerns and are improving this and that", but instead basically said "We are awesome and here's our plan for deployment for the next 10 years!"
thank you
there are plenty of things that should NEVER be privatized
healthcare insurance, for instance
What about food? Surely food is more important that healthcare. We need to collectivize and put government in charge of the farms to ensure that the poor have enough to eat.
Oh wait, in the US food is so cheap and abundant that poor people are fat and in the Soviet union tens of millions of people starved to death and people waited in line for hours to buy bread when government managed the farms.
I know some Serbian refugees who came to the US and were on food stamps. A family of 4 was living on the food stamp allotment for one person and they still considered themselves to be eating like kings. How? They weren't spending any of the money on junk food, they were buying 20 pound bags of rice, 20 pound bags of hamburger, and pasta and cooking everything themselves at home. They were amazing with ramen noodles.
Sorry, your comment above where you say the steel can't "melt" is not only incorrect but missing the point (it doesn't have to melt to lose a lot of strength), and that abstract doesn't say what you suggest it says. Just because the dust ends up having properties similar to thermite (which is what is says) DOES NOT MEAN THERMITE WAS PLANTED IN THE BUILDING, it just means another unexpected thing that may have added to the flames. Since it was found as dust and not as a melted mass doesn't that rule out deliberate ignition anyway? That huge quantity of dust didn't ignite.
While you don't know me from anyone and I've never published any papers I did work as a metallurgist in a steel rod rolling mill for a little while in the early 1990s and in an electricity generating company after that. I've seen a lot of steel lose strength as it heats up, both the obvious red hot stuff (rod rolling from 600mm thick to 5mm), in boilers (a bit cooler) and in a crude oil heater in an oil refinery (just hot enough to lose strength and split).
Now you make thermite with metal dust, which means any metal dust made any way (eg. huge building collapse) is superficially going to look similar and unfortunately going to behave a similar way in a fire (see also flour dust explosions). In the case of a building made of steel and aluminium with a lot of organic material (wood, paper, plastics) and you grind it all up with a huge collapse then it is no surprise that it ends up as the material described in the abstract and we can all be thankful that the dust did not ignite after the buildings fell or there would have been an even larger death toll. I did some stuff with powered metal in the late 1980s at University, and the really fine stuff has to be handled very carefully due to the fire and explosion risk. The titanium powder came packed inside two tins, with the outer tin filled with an inert gas. Something like that would make a bigger bang, or actual thermite would have melted a lot more than what actually happened, or if that dust ignited there would have been a huge fireball.
Cherry picking key words appears to have led you to the wrong conclusion. There's conspiracy theorists that think a government is so powerful and omniceint that only an act of government can possibly hurt them. The real world doesn't work like that. Governments are made up of real fallible people, especially governments where Horse Judges are appointed to key positions.
What I get from that abstract is the sense that things could have been even worse. I do not see anything in it that implies that thermite was planted. Is there something in the entire paper that clearly implies that instead of just that the dust from a building made of steel and aluminium contains steel and aluminium? Have you read and understood the paper?
Why, "corporate socialism" is perfectly possible. A corporation, after all, is a small dictatorial state; if given sufficient room to do whatever it wants, it can well delve into some form of paternalistic socialism if that's how the people running it are inclined. Ford is a pretty famous example of that, but there are plenty more.
The fundamental problem with this arrangement is the same as with any dictatorship with an "enlightened ruler" - it's run on the whim of a single person or a small group, and does not respond to the populace. Therefore, it can change its nature quite radically for no reasons whatsoever. Practice shows that such arrangements don't last long term.
It really does not matter whether you would wish to fly out of those airports. They exist and they compete with the "one airport" you claim has no competition.
You listed airports in Yuma, Prescott and *Flagstaff* as being competition for Sky Harbor airport in Phoenix?
Sky Harbor Airport to Prescott's airport is a 107 mile drive into the mountains of central Arizona. Just shy of 2 hours in no traffic, and that assumes you don't live east or south of Sky Harbor, which I'd imagine close to 1/3rd of the population of the Phoenix metro area do. A more realistic travel time is on the order of 3 hours.
Sky Harbor to Flagstaff's Pulliam Airport is even worse, a 145 mile drive to a city nestled in some of the tallest mountains in the state, about a mile higher than Phoenix. 2.5 hours minimum - more like 3.5-4 during commute hours. Nobody in their right mind would consider that "competition" even if Pulliam were an appreciable fraction the size of Sky Harbor, which it's not.
Sky Harbor Airport to Yuma Airport is a 189 mile drive. 3 hours, 22 minutes in no traffic, 4+ in traffic. Not as many mountains to deal with, but hot, desolate and isolated. And 4 hours assumes you don't live east or north of Sky Harbor, which I'd imagine over half of the people in the Phoenix metro area do, in which case you'd have to cross over the congested downtown area, adding who knows how much time to the trip.
None of these airports would represent competition for Sky Harbor *even if they offered a similar menu of flights*, which none of them do. Being small airports, they also cost substantially more to fly into and out of than Sky Harbor, which is a hub for Southwest. And we won't even mention how much the gas for those trips would cost in the average automobile. Flights would have to be dramatically cheaper out of those distant airports in order to compete with Sky Harbor just on price, assuming flights to your desired destination were available in the first place, which they aren't.
FLxxx numbers are simply pressure altitude in hundreds of feet. In North America flight levels start at 18,000 feet so the lowest FL number is FL180. (In Europe it is much more complicated...) Below that level it is simply "altitude". A normal cruising altitude would be from FL300 to FL410 and may vary from that based on length of hop, specs of the aircraft, congestion, and weather. Not sure where you are going to find any quantity of aircraft cruising at FL180 and FL280 is definitely not "high".
Cabin pressure is not measured in "Flight Levels". That is just silly.
Common commercial aircraft are pressurized to a pressure equivalent of 8,000 feet. The big exception to this is the new Boeing Dreamliner that is pressurized to 6,000 feet which is hailed as a major improvement in passenger comfort and safety.