Brakedwell,
Hmmm... I'm pretty certain you are wrong...a couple of flight crew and two or three flight attendants.. trying it on as a say a 146 crew...
Not too much problem there...
As for ID.. a simple robbery would give me all the originals I needed.. a good forgery set up would allow me to make all the fake IDs required. Again not a mountain to climb in voew of what is wanted.
I'm sure that prior to the 11th September, 'we' would have said it was not possible to organise a simultaneous four airliner hijack and suicide mission either, let alone to knock down the Twin Towers or yet attack the Pentagon.. or a co-ordinated multi bomb attack in London either....
We were wrong on both counts...
They might have beliefs and attitudes which we do not agree with, but there are as many idiots here as there and likewise there are as many intelligent, organised and disciplined leaders....
Adrain,
Quite... until you realise that you need to set, maintain and police this profile; update it with new permutations and information and who makes those calls....again you will target specifics which can easily be avoided....I'm pretty certain that the London bombers would have slipped thro the net.. and the Police with their profiling managed to kill an innocent Brazilian.
Profiling relies far too much on compentence... a commodity in short supply in many areas. Basic security, such as searches, acts as a deterent and is far less reliant on judgement and ability. Multiple layers are possible fairly cheaply, so a single mistake is less likely to prove disasterous...If you rely on the profiling, get it wrong once and the results are potentially terrible...in a multi layer 'dumb' system one persons' slip up is likely to be picked up by the next layer.. Ok its not fool proof but it is more 'reliable'.
El Al makes it work not by being clever, but by being competent...and using very dedicated staff who are working less for an airline or airport operator and more for the nation...It stems from a different source, a different motivation. And they the security staff are very mobile, moving from nation to nation regularly to ensure that nobody gets 'stale' or worse compromised. All possible with a 'state' institution, less possible with commercial companies.
Certainly profiling would be a valid additional layer...but not a replacement.
But the issue here is not security at all, its the position of crew with respect to what ever security is in place. Therefore I maintain that it is not what is doen, but how it is done. The 'spectacle' of crrew being treated as 'SLF' is not accpetable...and separation would allow different process to be carried out without it being a publicity issue.