Fri, Dec 20, 2002
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."
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