U.S. Orders Armed Officers on Some Jets

[farmgirl]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&e=1&u=/ap/20031229/ap_on_re_us/airline_security
By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Amid a heightened state of alert for terrorists, the U.S. government said Monday it will require international air carriers in certain cases to place armed law enforcement officers on flights over the United States.

The Homeland Security Department said the directive, which is effective immediately, will further enhance security on commercial and cargo aircraft flying to, from and over the United States.

"We are asking international air carriers to take this protective action as part of our ongoing effort to make air travel safe for Americans and visitors alike," Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said in a statement.

"I have said that we will take specific steps to increase security whenever necessary, and with this action we are doing just that," he added.

Homeland Security spokesman Dennis Murphy said the move will apply to specific flights "based on specific information" whenever it surfaces.

"We will then notify the carrier that based on information we received, we require a law enforcement officer to be on the plane," Murphy said. The directive contemplates that armed officers from the country of the airline's ownership would be aboard.

A senior intelligence official said earlier this month that analysts were particularly concerned about the threat of Sept. 11-style attacks, in which terrorists would use hijacked airliners as weapons.

The directive comes in the form of three emergency amendments to air security regulations involving cargo planes, passenger planes and airliners passing over U.S. airspace.

There are thousands of international commercial and cargo flights daily involving U.S. airspace and hundreds of international carriers.

Britain said Sunday it tightened security for trans-Atlantic flights and suggested it might put armed sky marshals on some planes. The United States already places armed security officers on certain flights.

"The last few days have seen the United States increase their general threat and security levels, and what we are proposing is a proportionate and appropriate level of response at a time when the threat to both our countries and around the world remains real and serious," Britain's top law enforcement official, David Blunkett, said.

The Bush administration raised the terrorism alert level to orange, or high, on Dec. 21 and Air France canceled six flights between Paris and Los Angeles on Wednesday and Thursday, following security discussions between U.S. and French officials.

"What we are saying here is we expect this level of cooperation from all nations," Murphy told The Associated Press. "This step is in case we might not get that same level of cooperation that we've received thus far from our closest allies. We anticipate the same level of cooperation from all air carriers that fly to and out of the U.S."

In a news release, the Homeland Security Department said it will continue to conduct checks on passengers and crew of flights entering and leaving U.S. airspace, and will analyze threat information related to those flights.

When intelligence information warrants, it said, the government will direct additional security requirements for specific flights, including protection by law enforcement officers where warranted, it said.

[2Sheds_Jackson]

Oh man, how do I get that gig? That would be pretty sweet to be on the gov't payroll & paid to fly internationally.

[Javehn]

Well , sometimes that can be very demanding job .

You also can do this : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2005865.stm
Money money money .

[usa320]

That does look like a pretty decent gig.

Why are all the air marshalls dropping out?

You get a decent paycheck and good benifits and you get to fly all over creation.



I still think though that security wont be good until they get rid of those rent-a-cops in the airport checkpoints.

Replace them with people who actually care about doing a good job- either police or military personel.

[S'13]

Welcome to the club...


Unfriendly skies are no match for El Al

By Vivienne Walt, USA TODAY

JERUSALEM — "Has this luggage ever been used by someone else?" asked the El Al security official, a woman with a soft smile and long ponytail at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris before my departure to Tel Aviv last weekend. She eyed my weathered black bag, sitting on the floor next to a cubicle used for body searches and interrogations. "My husband sometimes uses the suitcase," I said. "Where has he flown?" she pressed. "Once to the Persian Gulf, I think," I replied. That might have set off alarm bells in her mind, but the "selector," as screeners for Israel's national airline are known, had meanwhile found a bigger problem.

Examining each stamp in my passport, she froze at a page with Arabic lettering.
"Where's this for?" she asked. "Syria," I said — one of Israel's bitterest enemies. I hurriedly explained: "I'm a journalist. I went there for the president's funeral."

She summoned a muscular male colleague.

"You traveling alone?" he asked. I replied I was.

"But I saw you talking to someone in line," he said. "Who is he?"

Indeed, to pass the time, I had exchanged a few words with a passenger standing behind me in the long security line about five minutes before. I barely remembered the exchange.

But like everything else when flying El Al, my idle chatter had not gone unnoticed.

So it goes when traveling with the world's most security-conscious airline.

For Americans considering an end to free and easy flying in the USA, El Al provides a glimpse of what might lie ahead after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Having lived for decades with bombs and suicide attacks, Israel designed the industry's most impenetrable flight security more than 20 years ago. Officials say it is a stunning success. Despite several wars and endless conflict at home, El Al's sole hijacking was in 1968, before the system began.

Other catastrophes have been averted since. One bomb was found in 1979 in Zurich in the bag of a German passenger who looked nervous: He had thought he had been hired to smuggle diamonds. Another bomb was discovered a few years ago in the bag of a pregnant English passenger in London, placed there by her Palestinian lover, whose identity security officials had checked beforehand.

The recent suicide hijackings could never have occurred on El Al, officials say. "Those men's names would be on our list," says Shlomo Dror, a Defense Ministry spokesman who helped design El Al's system. Staff also easily would have noticed that the hijackers traveling first class did not look wealthy enough to pay the fare, he said.

For years, the airline industry has lauded El Al's security. Yet until now, no American company has considered copying the elaborate system, which cost El Al about $90 million last year. In 1987, Dror drafted a lengthy security plan for Pan Am Airlines, suggesting profiling passengers, opening bags and hiring professional security staff. The company rejected it as costly and intrusive. One year later, a bomb on a Pan Am flight to New York exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people.

"American security has been sleeping well for years," says Beni Tal, head of a security consulting firm in Tel Aviv, who has worked on government security. "Now they have woken up forever."

Ironically, after a year of heavy losses, El Al's bookings have soared since Sept. 11, with many passengers too fearful to fly other airlines. In stark contrast to other airlines, El Al shelved its plans to lay off 500 people and withdraw some of its Boeing 747-200 aircraft.

Still, it is not clear that El Al's security can be duplicated. El Al's flight load — about 40 flights a day to about 51 destinations — is minuscule compared with any major American airline. The largest U.S. carrier, American Airlines, by comparison, had about 2,400 daily flights before Sept. 11. And until now, Americans would have resisted the lengthy time involved in the screening process, which can even result in flight delays until the questioning is complete.

Despite their current anxieties, Americans also might balk at El Al-style ethnic profiling. Staff scrutinize the passengers' names, dividing them into low-risk (Israeli or foreign Jews), medium-risk (non-Jewish foreigners) and extremely high-risk travelers (anyone with an Arabic name). These people automatically are taken into a room for body and baggage checks and lengthy interrogation. Single women also are considered high-risk, for fear they might be used by Palestinian lovers to carry bombs.

To sift out who is who, screeners usually begin by asking passengers whether they understand any Hebrew, which most Jews do. Officials argue that such blatant discrimination is necessary.

"We don't ask the same questions to everyone; there's a surprise element so people can't prepare their answers," says El Al spokesman Nachman Klieman, adding that they don't reveal many of their security secrets publicly.

In fact, El Al's security kicks in long before the passenger will notice. Call an El Al office in any city to book a ticket, and your name will be checked against a computer list of terrorist suspects compiled by Interpol, the FBI, Shin Bet (Israel's intelligence service) and others.

My Paris travel agent insisted that the El Al flight on which I had reserved a seat did not exist. That is because El Al changes its schedule so frequently — to foil terrorist planning — that some agencies find it hard to keep up.

Once you board, up to five armed undercover agents will travel with you in strategic aisle seats, ready for attack. Furthermore, like many Israelis, cabin crews are former soldiers in the Israeli military who have received combat training. The cockpit door, of reinforced steel, is locked from the inside before passengers board and is opened only after everyone has disembarked at their destination. No matter what's going on in the rest of the plane, it is never opened during flight.
"Our pilots go to the bathroom," says Klieman, without confirming whether bathrooms are inside the cockpit.

Perhaps surprisingly, El Al's pilots are not armed. "I hear the American pilots want to have arms now, which I think is a bad idea," Tal says. "They could go outside the cockpit and hurt people. You cannot fly a plane and carry arms."

Even for regular El Al customers, the security process never feels comfortable, and the pre-flight probing is sure to make you feel somehow suspect. Watching closely for contradictions, the screener dissected my typically haphazard travel plan as though it were a lethal conspiracy.

"Why did you buy your ticket at the last minute?" the screener asked. "I changed my plans," I said.

"Why are you carrying wrapped boxes?" "I like to bring chocolates when people invite me over for dinner," I said.

"Who chose them in the store?" she asked. "I did," I replied.

By El Al's standards, my screening was light — only 10 minutes of questioning by two well-paid officials with full military training. It ended with one of them locking all the zippers on my suitcase with plastic ties. "Open these when you get to your hotel," she instructed before sending me to the check-in desk.

El Al's process is so time-consuming that passengers are required to arrive three hours before all flights. Passengers can be interrogated separately by three different screeners.

And questioners ask passengers where they purchased their tickets to compare their answers with ticket codes representing the purchase location.

A lot happens behind the scenes, too. Once luggage moves from the check-in desk to the conveyer belt, it is put in a pressurized box that detonates any explosive before the bag is loaded on the plane, Dror says. No unaccompanied bags are allowed. Those bags remain behind.

Bags transferring from another airline to El Al have to be checked through security again.

Security officers watch over cleaning crews while they service the aircraft in foreign airports.

After the intense security, once on board I felt some relief, knowing that I could drop off to sleep without a care while plainclothes agents with firearms sat nearby, wide awake in the dark.

[WARPIG]

Air Marshalls are over worked and working for a broken system. Lack of admin support, training, and clear intruction give most Air Marshalls poor job satisfaction and stressful work environment. At first many Federal Law Enforcement personnel looked to give up FBI or similar gigs to fly armed. The pay and benefits were comparable but the expected responsibilities were much less. This led to high turn around and more problems for the already inept TSA. New programs now allow Federal agents to cross train as Air Marshalls to support the workload and put shooters in the air when needed. Air Marshall program is expected to improve and could prove to be a good platform to move laterally into other Fed programs.
TSA is still not the agency we pictured when it was introduced. If you think about it.... the FAA was supposed to be the agency that policed the Airlines insuring that they did the right things. After 9-11 it became obvious that it was not working. FAA failed to control complacency and poor security.. partially due to funding issues, financial lobbying and complaints from airlines, and apathetic leadership. So to fix the problem the Government decides to put the FAA in charge of implementing the very security measures they could not enforce by renaming that branch as the TSA and putting under the Dep of Transportation. The very same people that couldn't make the commercial airlines follow Federal law.. were now in charge of carrying out the task. To add insult to injury.. US senate decides to Arm the Airlines that couldn't control security in the first place.

Let's look at that... FAA can't enforce it's own Laws to police the airlines. We take that responsibility away from the airlines and give it to the people who wouldn't enforce that law in the first place. Then we give the people who couldn't follow the law because it was costing them money.. guns.

Sorry people, that is definately not a circle that I want to be in. Sounds like a cool gig.. but then again... who is to blame when a plane gets 'jacked? Think the TSA will take responsibility? Or just let the media feed on the Air Marshalls?

[Seiyuuki]

Unfortunately, the American's airline system is just far too big for the Air Marshalls to be as effective and intimidating as El Al.

[usa320]

indeed- El Al is one of Israel's only airlines.

In the US we have thousands of flights in the air at a time. Its impossible to have air marshalls on every single flight.

[Javehn]

What is the problem to have even one armed personel (except the pilot ) on board of plane? We may have only one El-Al , but , let's check buses , that also requires same security amount on them . We have large number of bus companies , which all requieres armed personel on them .
We also have a limited number of security , so the burden is divided between all the authorities that able to provide security . Delegate resourses . Use the best available people on the bigest Airline company (like those Air Marshal , like i understood , they are supposed to be the best , no ) , and go down from there , using every time different authority so there will no be resourse problem . That can get very tricky , but that is working for us .