This is a reasonable proposal insofar as prejudice is concerned, but the issue may be decided on the basis of security and economics and how far the airlines are willing to go to risk their equipment. If profiling has no basis in providing real security, then the prejudice of the passengers should be eliminated by education rather than by accomodation with unjustifiable provision of extra and expensive flights.

And if it does have a basis in providing real security?

Sounds like a great idea but only if there are enough people who truly do pose a danger to the passengers on the airplane. I think, like "sand," that the real problem is lack of education, reliance on anecdotal evidence, and/or laziness of the mind to differentiate between different racial, ethnic, etc. members. TRANSLATION: PREJUDICE! And the only real solution to prejudice is (partially) integration. Otherwise, why target victims of prejudice with not just segregation but a higher likelihood of being casualties statistics?

P.S. I learned the nature of prejudice from Georgia Witkin's book "The Truth about Women."

There is only one security check per airport. You are asking to double the number of employees needed to do a security check, to double the number of gates needed for aircraft going to different destinations, and doubling the number of aircraft to handle the passenger flow going to different cities.<p>Almost anyone can be coerced into assisting in or performing terrorist activities. Including blonde, blue eyed, fair skinned, couples. And with increased technologies, more and more is available to circumvent security procedures. Fortunately, most terrorists are unmotivated people with ADHD. They have a hard time thinking for themselves enough to cross the street safely. They have no interest in making a real effort to improve the society that they live within. They rationalize their inability to think by putting their faith in "people" that profess righteousness, yet those same leaders are blatant violators of the faith and politic standard for which they "say" they represent. The common terrorist does not want a better life for those around them nor do they want what is best for their family. Look at Iraq, all those terrorist running around killing their own people. Where were they when Sadam Husein was in power. They were probably killing their own people even then.

Enough of my bandstanding. Educate all peoples about how to do "Ethical Reasoning" (a method and tools for evaluating what makes sense or not) from the time they are born and you won't have anywhere the degree of violence that happens in the world.

I would rather see us given robes and slippers as we walk through a security checkpoint and we strip down and deposit all our belongings in our suitcase. The suitcase is taken and shipped on a different aircraft. We have our retina scanned and our medical profile is compared with what is shown on the xray. We walk through a low-level xray and we go to our gate and get on the aircraft. When we arrive we pick up our suitcase and we get dressed and take the robe and slippers home with us.

Now even after all of that, people have implants. A woman's breasts can hold enough high explosive to desimate an aircraft. The metal implants of a joint can easily conceal a detonator and timing mechanism. With modern technology, detonators are made that are smaller than a grain of sand, you won't catch it on an xray in the vicinity of a metal implant. These implants can be done years in advance so there won't be any explosive signature to be detected at the security checkpoint. So as you can see, you can't stop terrorist activities by detection even with extreme security measures.

But what you can do is teach "Ethical Reasoning" so people will find better ways to get what they want without attacking innocent people.