Air marshals' resignations flood TSA, managers say Chief says fewer than 80 have quit

USA Today ^ | August 29, 2002 | Blake Morrison

[Darth Sidious]

At least 250 federal air marshals have left the top-secret program, and documents obtained by USA TODAY suggest officials are struggling to handle what two managers call a flood of resignations.

Sources within the program say marshals are quitting at a rate of about a dozen a week. And some days, scores of marshals are calling in sick to get a break from flight schedules they say are making them ill, sources say. One memo, dated Aug. 16 and sent to managers by the program's operations control center, says some marshals could face ''flights for 10 consecutive days.''

[Drango]

And some days, scores of marshals are calling in sick

Hello...airline food!

[B4Ranch]

The Transportation Department statement said none of the marshals' complaints, ''individually or collectively, constitute a crisis.''

A crisis under their training manuals must be restricted to "aircraft hijacking".

[pabianice]

Sources within the program say marshals are quitting at a rate of about a dozen a week. And some days, scores of marshals are calling in sick to get a break from flight schedules they say are making them ill, sources say. One memo, dated Aug. 16 and sent to managers by the program's operations control center, says some marshals could face ''flights for 10 consecutive days.''

How awful. Try flights for 180 consecutive days. What a bunch of wussies.

pabianice

[harpseal]

Lets see we have six thousand newly minted air marshalls, and less than a year into the program they are having problems processing the resignations. When the concept of an increased number of air marshalls was first broached as an answer to those of us who spoke of the need for at minimum armed aircrew and maybe armed passengers (under some minimal training guidelines) the stsists said that t would be no problem having sufficient air marshalls on very flight in just a few months. Clearly they were at best inaccurate at the time or intentionally lying.

I shall continue to refrain from airline travel.

Stay well - Stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown

[jjm2111]

Ooh Orion.

[elephantlips]

We need to remember the source of such information. I am surprised they didn't mention that Kissinger is a sky marshall and he was the first to leave. The way the media is, two marshalls could have resigned and that constitutes "mass resignations."

[joesnuffy]

Me to...If you cant get there by driving there is no sense going...
I cannot imagine having to stand by and watch my wife harrassed by these affirmative action security gods...and not going balisitic...and messing up our vacation...by spending it in jail...or worse..
-dont say it

[Joe Brower]

[JesusIsLord]

In the early days of airline passenger service, certain airlines required that attendants have RN certification. Let's tweak that idea a bit. How about a federal law requiring that all commercial pilots and attendants be trained in the use of, and must carry in-flight handguns.

So, what's wrong with this idea?

[justshutupandtakeit]

It would be good to know what you are blasting before blasting. These are the armed in flight marshalls not gate checkers. Geeez.

[dennisw]

http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/factfile/aircraft/air-p3.html

What a beautiful airplane.

[r9etb]

So, what's wrong with this idea?

What's wrong with it is that once the bad guys know who has the guns, they can make a plan to neutralize them. It'd be pretty easy, too.

For example, suppose you decide to grab a 737. You would wait until the attendants have the drink cart mid-plane. If you have three guys in coach, odds are that you'll have at least one on either side of the cart. Attack when both attendants are facing the cart. The attendant up in first class gets grabbed

This leaves you with a hostage situation, and probably some means of getting access to the cockpit. Armed pilots would be safe in the cockpit, but wouldn't be able to open the door to use their guns. Stalemate, at best.

[JesusIsLord]

The fundamental question should be, would armed attendants be an overall deterrent or an overall benefit to terrorists. Your analysis seems to be shared by the airlines and our lawmakers.

Do EL AL (Israel) flight attendants carry weapons? My guess is that if they do, it’s not public knowledge. .

[Ancesthntr]

This leaves you with a hostage situation, and probably some means of getting access to the cockpit. Armed pilots would be safe in the cockpit, but wouldn't be able to open the door to use their guns. Stalemate, at best.

A stalemate of this sort prevents airplanes from being used as cruise missiles. Also, minimal training of the flight crew would prevent an incident of the sort you mentioned. Passengers not interested in becoming statistics would help out the flight crew - Flight 93 proved that.

The bottom line is that the more good guys on each flight that are armed, the better. Ideally, no one would need to be armed, but the world is well past that point.

[taxed2death]

Hmmmmmmmm. That line says it all "they're going to have no one left but the bottom of the barrel".

Gub-mint peons = money wasters who can't hack it at Burger King.

[looney tune]

Can you add me to your ping list?

[looney tune]

Here we go again. More of the same from usa today. A bit overblown, too, I might add.

[Joe Brower]

Can you add me to your ping list

I don't have one. The "AirSec_List" tag itself is the ping-list. It corresponds to the following URL which pulls up all threads so tagged on FR. Click on the link below and then bookmark the page:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/involved?group=410

And please tell everyone else. I get to explain this to my fellow FReepers about five times a day...

[r9etb]

My guess is that if they do, it’s not public knowledge.

IIRC, El Al has its own version of Air Marshals -- armed agents who pose as passengers.