AFGE, Flyersrights.org Say The Move Protects Aviation Workers And The Traveling Public

More groups are lining up to praise the decision Wednesday by TSA to reverse its proposed policy to allow small knives in the passenger cabins of airliners.

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) National President J. David Cox Sr. said "This decision is the right one for the safety and security of every Transportation Security Officer, airline passenger and aviation employee. In addition to the lessons learned on 9/11 about the threat of terrorists armed with knives, our concern is for our members who are assaulted far too often by irate passengers. Keeping the knife ban will help keep those confrontations from escalating,"

AFGE is the exclusive representative for the more than 45,000 Transportation Security Officers who screen all commercial airline passengers, baggage and cargo. It was one of nine organizations representing over 400,000 aviation professionals, passengers and law enforcement officers that filed a legal petition with Transportation Security Administrator John Pistole and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, urging them to rescind the policy change and keep the knife ban in place.

Paul Hudson, President of FlyersRights.org expressed "relief" that the TSA was shelving and not just postponing its announced rule change allowing passengers to carry knives up to 6 centimeters on airliners. 

This shows that when air traveler organizations unite and work together, a crazy and dangerous TSA policy like this knife policy, secretly lobbied for by the American Knife & Tool Institute and then promulgated in a surprise announcement by TSA Administrator John Pistole with no stakeholder input on March 5th, could be and was properly defeated, Hudson said. "Hopefully, the TSA has learned the lesson that transportation security policies affecting many millions of air travelers need to be fully vetted with all stakeholders, not made just on internal deliberations and secret lobbying by those with special financial interests or insider connections.  This is the third time that the TSA has had to reverse a major security policy decision in the past several years."

FMI: www.afge.org, http://FlyersRights.org