since this story came out last week, i've been wondering what my terrorism score might be. i've been to some places that might look suspicious. and some of my itineraries might have raised some flags. i bought the two legs of my syria trip separately (i used frequent flier miles to get a round trip ticket to europe, then separately bought an amsterdam-damascus ticket through a european web site because it had the cheapest rate).
then in 2001 i had a philadelphia to uzbekistan itinerary which was suddenly rerouted to mali (another muslim country) in the weeks immediately following 9-11. months before i had purchased the philly to london to tashkent ticket all at once. but then i let the london to tashkent flight go to waste and bought a last minute london to paris to bamako ticket that i tacked to the end of my philly to london flight from the original uzbekistan itinerary. without anyone asking me why i did it, i suppose it probably could have looked a little suspicious.
then i saw archy ask "what constitutes a terrorist meal?" and it made me wonder even more.
whenever i book a plane ticket online and they give me a pulldown menu to choose a special meal, i always choose the hindu meal. why? the same reason that i chose "prince" instead of "mr" as my title when i registered online for amtrak's guest rewards program 5 years ago; because it was an option. the hindu meals aren't particularly good. then again, the non-hindu meals aren't that good either. but i have had some entertaining moments where i'm sitting next to a darker skinned person and the flight attendant cannot believe that the pale faced guy is the one with the hindu meal.
so now i wonder how my repeated choice of the hindu option will effect my terrorism score. is the oddity of the choice in conjunction with my the rest of my itinerary gonna get me a higher score? or will the choice of something other than "halal" throw the profiling program off?
another random thought: if the meal choice is a predictor of terrorist tendencies, then are airlines jeopardizing national security when they cut back on their inflight meal service?
