ANN's On Their Case, and Now AOPA... TSA's Imminent Surrender Predicted

AOPA President Phil Boyer told a gathering of some 400 pilots this week that the new TSA / FAA security rules go too far. He vowed that AOPA would challenge portions of the rules that tread on pilot rights.

"We certainly support lawful efforts to prevent terrorists from using aircraft to attack the U.S.," Boyer said during an AOPA Pilot Town Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, "but these rules smack of McCarthyism. The TSA has become judge, jury and executioner. What's happened to due process?"

Last Friday, the Transportation Security Administration and FAA implemented new rules that direct FAA to revoke the airman certificate of anyone that TSA determines is a threat to transportation or national security. But the process provides no independent review. A pilot can only appeal the threat determination back to TSA, and TSA, because of national security concerns, doesn't have to reveal the information implicating the pilot.

"There was no discussion of the standards, procedures or criteria by which TSA makes the threat determination," said Boyer. "And you can't refute the charges against you if you don't know what the 'evidence' is."

Boyer (with TSA's James Loy, right) said that AOPA legal and technical staff are already researching the new rules, noting that AOPA's legal counsel's preliminary opinion is that TSA had exceeded the authority Congress had granted it. [Note: Congress doesn't have the authority to grant anybody unconstitutional power --ed.]

Boyer said that AOPA had immediately brought its concerns to TSA management. And Boyer will begin personally presenting those same concerns to members of Congress next week.

Boyer polled the audience members, asking, "With full regard to the nation's security concerns, should AOPA fight these rules?" Some 94 percent of the pilots attending said, "Yes!" Boyer said AOPA would file strong comments on the rules, and urged pilots to make their own comments as well.

"With the power of our almost 400,000 members, we will make an impact," Boyer said.

FMI: www.aopa.org