You know, there’s something to be said about honoring those who have passed due to catastrophe.  I’m not saying that there should be a monument or post or something for every single person ever lost to a catastrophe; that would be unreasonable.  For example, if there was one at the site of the 1978 United Airlines DC-8 crash, there wouldn’t be an apartment complex near the corner of SE 160th and SE Burnside in Portland, Oregon.  But still, where there are significant accidents, there should be dedications and memorials.

On the 50th anniversary of the first jet aircraft bombing, there was finally a dedication for the people lost of Continental Flight 11, a flight from Chicago to Kansas city to Los Angeles, that crashed because one of the passengers ignited six sticks of dynamite onboard, bringing the aircraft down just South of the Iowa boarder in Unionville, Missouri.  It is sad that these crashes are lost to time and memory.  Hell, even as stated in a previous podcast, the American Airlines flight 191 out of Chicago that crashed in 1979 didn’t get a memorial until very recently.

While we mourn those that we have lost, we should honor their memory, and the legacy that they left behind.  What was the legacy of Continental Flight 11?  It is heralded as the incident that sparked the modern passenger-screening era.  And while we often find this, and the TSA, frustrating, it is indeed a necessary thing.