Effective Dec. 22, new regulations will allow airline passengers to once again carry certain sharp objects onto commercial flights. The Transportation Security Administration is relaxing its strictures on scissors with cutting blades shorter than four inches and tools such as screwdrivers, pliers and wrenches no longer than seven inches.

Here in Boston, from which two of the four Sept. 11 aircraft departed, the chief executive of the Massachusetts Port Authority (Massport), Craig P. Coy, dispatched a letter to TSA chief Kip Hawley detailing his opposition to the new protocols. U.S. Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., has gone so far as to introduce a bill aimed at maintaining the existing ban on most sharp implements. Markey calls his bill the "Leave All Blades Behind Act" -- a crafty tweak of the federal government's No Child Left Behind Act.

For some of us, the changes can't come fast enough. For the past four years, our insatiable fixation with pointed objects -- far and away the No. 1 topic in this columnist's pantheon of peeves -- has diverted the nation's security resources away from more legitimate concerns, while siphoning away the patience of tens of millions of fliers. Whatever enjoyment and dignity remained in the air travel experience has been summarily confiscated at the concourse metal detector, along with an estimated 30 million nail files, razors, pocketknives and other small tools.

The new regulations are a long-awaited acknowledgment of the extreme improbability that a Sept. 11-style copycat attack will be attempted or could succeed.

The introduction of armored cockpit doors, along with the increased vigilance of passengers and crew (with a number of pilots now authorized to carry guns), provides more than sufficient protection against hand-held weapons. The time and manpower saved by easing up on the confiscation of sharp objects can then be reassigned to other, more urgent tasks, such as hunting for explosives.

"Let's face it," TSA regional manager Ann Davis tells Ask the Pilot. "You can strangle somebody with a necktie if you really want to. It's time to focus on screening out intent, not just items themselves."

Terrorists, meanwhile, won't waste their time on schemes with such an extreme likelihood of failure.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for us. In America, reasoned debate and clear thinking aren't the useful currencies they once were, and backlash to the TSA's announcement has come from a host of unexpected sources -- members of Congress, flight attendants unions and families of Sept. 11 victims.

"The Bush administration proposal is just asking the next Mohammed Atta to move from box cutters to scissors," said Rep. Markey.

Actually, that Atta and his henchmen used box cutters to commandeer four aircraft means very little. Just as effectively, they could have employed snapped-off pieces of plastic, shattered bottles or, for that matter, their own bare fists and some clever wile. Sept. 11 had nothing to do with exploiting airport security and everything to do with exploiting our mindset at the time. What weapons the terrorists had or didn't have is essentially irrelevant. Hijackings, to that point in history, were perpetrated mainly through bluff, and while occasionally deadly, they seldom resulted in more than a temporary inconvenience -- diversions to Cuba or cities in the Middle East. The moment American flight 11 collided with the north tower of the World Trade Center, everything changed; good luck to the next skyjacker stupid enough to attempt the same stunt with anything less than a flamethrower in his hand.

"September 11th wasn't a failure of passenger screening; it was a failure of procedure," voices Bruce Schneier, a renowned security commentator and author of "Beyond Fear -- Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World." "We can't possibly keep all dangerous things off airplanes. Our only hope for security is to reduce the effectiveness of those dangerous things once they're on board. Exactly two things have improved air passenger security since the 2001 attacks: reinforcing the cockpit door, and teaching passengers that they need to fight back. Everything else has been a waste of money."

In any event, even a child has the means and imagination to fashion a sharp and dangerous object -- more dangerous than any wrench or pair of scissors -- from just about anything. Does this not nullify attempts to confiscate pointed tools?

Not according to Justin Green, an attorney representing the families of three crew members murdered on Sept. 11, two of whom were stabbed. "The terrorists used box cutters, knives and chemical weapons to take over the airplanes," responds Green. "They did not fashion weapons from snapped-off plastic or shattered bottles. On American Airlines Flight 11, two flight attendants and a passenger were stabbed with weapons that are similar in kind to the weapons that the TSA supports allowing back on board airliners.

"The weapons used by the terrorists were a central part of their strategy." Green contends that "there is no basis for the idea that the hijackings would have succeeded even if the weapons [had been] properly screened off."

There's no way to know that for certain, but it doesn't take a great leap of fantasy to assume that had box cutters been contraband items that day, which they were not, another weapon would easily have been improvised.

Thus far, one organization that has kept its head above the fray is the Air Line Pilots Association, the industry's biggest pilots union, with a membership representing four of the country's top five airlines. In a prepared statement, the organization voiced its support for the TSA's modifications, provided the agency is willing to take steps on other fronts. "ALPA feels that decreasing the prohibited list of potentially dangerous items, without making a matching increase in efforts to screen passengers for hostile intent, is not necessarily a step toward increased passenger and crew security."

Most pilots I spoke to concur with the ALPA's position. "I agree with the TSA position on scissors and small tools," says a United Airlines pilot. "Honestly, I wish they'd let us carry our Leatherman tools again."

But not all crew members are in lockstep. "Because a deadly blade can be fashioned from plastic or some other means doesn't mean box cutters themselves ought to be let on board," argues a first officer for a major airline, asking that his name and airline not be revealed. "It's a 'two wrongs don't make a right' construction."

This is almost acceptable, if only there weren't so many hours of squandered time and manpower in the balance. Nobody wants weapons on a jetliner. But, more critical, neither do we want to bog down the system. The longer we fuss at the metal detectors over low-threat objects, the greater we expose ourselves to the very serious dangers of bombs and explosives. TSA is not in need of more screeners; it's in need of reallocation of personnel and resources.

It was, we shouldn't forget, 17 years ago this month that Pan Am flight 103 was destroyed over Lockerbie, Scotland by a stash of Semtex hidden inside a Toshiba radio in a piece of checked luggage. Then as now, and perhaps for years to come, explosives were the most serious high-level threat facing commercial aviation. European authorities were quick to implement a sweeping revision of luggage-screening protocols designed to thwart another Lockerbie. It took almost 15 years, and the catastrophe of Sept. 11, before America began to do the same -- and a comprehensive system still isn't fully in place.

Flying was and remains exceptionally safe, but whether that's because or in spite of the system is tough to tell. The "war on terror" has left us fighting many enemies -- some real, many imagined. We'll figure things out at some point, maybe. Until then, dead in Miami, Rigoberto Alpizar is yet more collateral damage.

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