BALPA Doesn't Like the Idea

Britain's Transport Secretary, Alistair Darling, announced Thursday that it won't be long before his country's airliners will be giving free seats to a new level of security force: armed Air Marshals, styled after those on US flights. He said during the announcement that these special police represent "a decisive step" against terrorism.

Interestingly, the head of the British ALPA union, Captain Mervyn Granshaw, sounded un-thrilled: "We have difficulties with the idea of having lethal weapons on board airliners," he told the press. Of course, we all have such "difficulties;' but, if anyone aboard is going to have such weapons, it would be good to have that person on our side.

ALPA (in the US) has long supported the Air Marshal program; and its members are at the forefront of an additional layer of safety, in the form of certain trained volunteer pilots' carrying guns.

ALPA spokesman John Mazor was reluctant to address the British events. (It's their country.) "Rather than address the British situation specifically, let us talk of the US system and situation," he told ANN. "Airline security has to be applied in many layers. Those would include items such as passenger screening, airport gate and baggage screening, name-matching, and so forth. Within the airplane, we have (or shortly will have) federal Air Marshals, reinforced cockpit doors, and the selective arming of airline pilots. None of these layers, in itself, is airtight. It is the cumulative effect of applying layer after layer, that gives you an adequate level of security. We view the federal Air Marshal program as an essential part of that security mosaic, as we also view the voluntary arming of pilots, in the US."

FMI: www.alpa.org