At the risk of becoming repetitive I'll mention it again... there is nothing wrong with properly trained sky marshals as long as they are part of a 'complete' security package and over here nothing has been made clear to us that that is the case. The government have made an pronouncement without any thought about those of us who have to work with these guys.
I understand and agree that there is more to it than just throwing armed marshalls on planes (in fact, I stated as much in the above post), but, again, how does having them on board hurt you?
You may have worked with them for two years and you may have been briefed before they were implemented but over here that is not the case.
Well, we were briefed, but AFTER the program was initiated.
I have also worked with sky marshalls but what I know about that I'm not at liberty to divulge here suffice it to say that without some form of pax profiling they are not an effective deterrent.
I disagree. While they might be more effective if they can single out the hijackers (if this were possible, then the baddies will likely not be on the aircraft in the first place), I feel that the knowledge that there is a chance of them being on board alone is a deterrent, and that they will be likely to go another route.
Because we were told that they would only be deployed on flights which were known to under threat how do you think we feel about it?
I think it's silly to fly a flight with a "known", threat in the first place. It really depends on the definintion of "known threat".