Airport Security (Merged) - Effects on Crew/Staff

[Fargoo]

Well, here's the rub.
How much do you trust the person you fly with. You may think it's ridiculous to even imagine that your fellow aviator has any deviant thoughts but do you know them that well??
I'd hope that if your co-pilot got ideas of flying into the ground you would put every ounce of strength into preventing him/her from doing so.
Given that the recent security alert made it clear that the use of home made explosives made by combining several innocuous liquids and triggering with a mobile phone I'd say it was only prudent to deny passengers and crew from taking these on board.
O'Leary clearly has no interest in the safety of his passengers and crew and would rather get his fast turnaround / hand baggage only policy back on track than have a little caution. Don't forget there was a real danger just over a week ago that fanatics would blow several airliners from the sky.

The real problem as I see it is the lack of trained staff at the major airports, obviously staff eat into BAA's profits and we just can't be having that!

Work to resolve the security problems yes but don't whinge that you're not immune to the policies just because you fly the machine. It's really not that tough having to check in your phone and toothpaste is it?

Fargoo

[Superfly]

Originally Posted by Fargoo

Don't forget there was a real danger just over a week ago that fanatics would blow several airliners from the sky.
:

Well, we still have to see the evidence ..........

[chandlers dad]

Originally Posted by Fargoo

Well, here's the rub.
How much do you trust the person you fly with. You may think it's ridiculous to even imagine that your fellow aviator has any deviant thoughts but do you know them that well??

It's really not that tough having to check in your phone and toothpaste is it?
Fargoo

No, its not that difficult to check your toothpaste and liquids, but what is going to happen when you are on a 3-5 day rotation, working full duty time limits every day (no time to shop and everything is closed by the time you get to the hotel anyway) and your checked bag does not arrive. Its sitting 2000 miles away and will arrive when you are jetting someplace else!

Totally disagree with your comment on the cellphone. How are you going to call dispatch if needed and no one is there? How are you going to call anyone should you check the phone, and like tens of thousands of others this past week, have their bag not make it on the flight with them. Now you are out for 3-5 days with no cell phone, no phone numbers.

Then you return home from the flight, your bag has followed you around the world and makes it home 2-3 days after you have, and you find that some jerk has stolen your phone, and has been making free calls to Africa on it for a week.. and you are responsible for the bill as the phone's being lost was not reported on a timely basis! With no liquids in the cabin, the crew should be allowed to have their phones, period!

Speaking of trusting your fellow aviator, only one case of a pilot downing a plane on purpose has been documented that I know of. The Egypt Air flight in the Atlantic a few years ago.

We just do not have a problem in this area. That said, have a good background check done on each pilot and give them a secure ID badge that allows them to bypass much of the screening. Do I think that they should waltz past screening? Yes and know but we all know that this is not going to happen, so lets make it as least obtrusive as possible and go from there. After it works that way for a few years then we can work to smooth it out from there.

CD

[MrBernoulli]

I totally disagree with the comments that pilots should be allowed to 'bypass' security in some form or another. Given long enough, a formerly trustworthy flight deck member could easily turn out to be the 'sleeper' we all dread. There is no reason that this couldn't happen.

Mobile phones? You don't NEED them on a flight deck. Thats what VHF, HF, ACARS and Satphones are for. Cabin crew certainly don't need mobile phones on an aircraft ...... though you would never believe it the way some of them seem to be attached to their phones by invisible umbilical cords. Pathetic.

I'm not fond of some of the procedures that flight deck crew have to endure to make it to the aircraft but I believe they are necessary.

[Carnage Matey!]

Then why does said sleeper need to be screened for toxic toothpaste? You are completely missing the point. Were I a sleeper I don't need a shoe bomb to take down the aircraft. I just wait til top of drop into JFK, kill the captain with an axe or fire extinguisher, or just poison his tea, then act normal on the R/T right up until the missed approach when I go hell for leather for Manhattan. No toothpaste required.

And while were on the subject of ACARS, Satphone, VHF and HF, it may amaze you to learn that not all aircraft have HF, Satphones or even ACARS, and even if they do there are black holes in the coverage of ACARS and HF use is forbidden on the ground in the vicinity of fuelling activity, so how do you suggest I talk to the company 3000 miles away when I'm on a remote stand?

[L337]

and MrBernoulli I totally disagree with your comments.

You are an example of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. It is your type of ignorance that is making the job of the professional pilot, virtually untenable.

L337

[Two's in]

It's interesting that when going through MCO as SLF, I am a fully subscribed member of the Clear Registered Traveller program. To participate in this I have had an FBI background check, been fingerprinted and had other biometric testing. The result is that apart from the obvious express lane treatment, the TSA staff don't (yet) treat me like an imbecile, even though every Clear Registered Traveller undergoes the same checks as everyone else. There is an acceptance that people in this program have had some positive vetting applied to their status and are therefore more, let's say "predictable".

Applying this principle to Flight Crew, it would not be difficult to standardize and collate the plethora of data associated with holding a Commercial License and devise a scheme similar to the Clear Registered Traveller program but for Flight Crew. That way a fast track approach could be used that pays homage to the great gods of bureaucracy and security, but results in only minimal disruption to crews. Not sure what the general feeling about fingerprinting, background checks, and biometric data being gathered might be, but it saves me at least an hour every time I travel, so it is a price I am prepared to pay.

[MrBernoulli]

L337

Of course you're entitled to disagree with my comments. We live in a democracy in the UK, don't we?

I'm sorry that my alleged 'type of ignorance' has me working longhaul, as a pilot, for one of the worlds largest airlines. I also have extremely recent and direct experience of the current security situation and how it is directly affecting pilots.

[wheelbarrow]

I cannot understand why we as professional aircrew put up with this nonsense. We are being treated as suspected terrorists every time we go to work!
I'm not much in favour of unions and striking, but maybe we should decide to stop putting up with this crap and insist that there are dedicated crew report facilities and specific measures that recognise that we have been vetted, security checked etc. up the ying yang. What sort of moronic idiot thinks that we are interested in trying to blow up our aircraft with a tube of toothpaste when it would be far more effective to do as happened a few years ago in the States if we were that way inclined.
Come on lads and lasses lets push to be treated as professional crews not terrorist suspects!

[Carnage Matey!]

I still think your sleeper scenario is wholly fantastic Bernoulli. I'll credit you with intelligence and assume you're not suggesting the scenario of a sleeper flying his aircraft into a building but the idea of a UK licenced pilot supplying explosive hair gel to terrorists? It's a bit far fetched. There are much easier ways to get a tube of toothpaste into the secure zone than to train a sleeper to fly, get him a job and then wait for a toothpaste plot to evolve. AQ are patient but they're not stupid, and bang for buck, thats got to be a pretty cr*ppy idea. If you still think the sleeper is a possibility then lets have positive vetting and iris scanning for all UK licenced flight crew then we can work with security instead of against it.

What is most tragic about this latest security farce is that it seems to have finally tipped the balance amongst pilots. For years we've complied with increasingly stringent (and pointless) security restrictions in order to be seen to be playing the game. Now we are actively working to get around the restrictions, looking for loopholes and workarounds to avoid the restrictions which have been imposed ostensibly to protect us. The lunatics really have taken over the asylum now.

[Carnage Matey!]

brakedwells post is very interesting, even if it is taken from the Guardian, which is somewhere below the Viz is terms of journalistic accuracy. Were the terrorists really trying to mix liquid explosive on board from peroxide, acetone and sulphuric acid? Harking back to my days of A-level Chemistry (in the days when A-levels were actually hard) I struggled to synthesise any sort or complex compound even with the benefit of precise measures, lab stands, white coats, Leibig condensors and lots of time. The idea that they could knock up a litre of liquid explosive in the aircraft bog from the content three Fanta bottles seems somewhat ridiculous to me. OK if they've actually got pre-prepared, workable liquid explosive then lets close down the liquid route, but if all they've got are the ingredients and the AQ guide to bomb making then the government really have over reacted here. If they're are worried about the ingredients then tell people that if they can eat the liquid they can take it. Then we're all with our toothpaste but the guy trying to chug a pint of acetone will give his own game away very quickly indeed.

[sidtheesexist]

Some cracking posts, read with interest. Firstly, when these draconian and totally kneejerk security measures were brought into place, why weren't flight/cabin crew noted as working groups worthy of special consideration due to all the OBVIOUS points already mentioned ? For SH crew (particularly the girlies) the last 10 days or so have been a complete pain in the GM! Secondly, what have our employers been doing do further our cause with COBRA/DFT etc? Thirdly, why has it taken c10 days for BALPA to publically criticise the current farcical situation?

Many refces to El Al and their amazingly robust and obviously EFFECTIVE security policy - why are we not copying them as many other previous posters on this and other threads have suggested?!...............Oh, I forgot, silly, silly me!!! The rights of a tiny majority of the BRITISH population come before the rights and safety of the overwhelming majority of the BRITISH population. 'PROFILING' is desciminatory! Political Correctness is a cancer which is running rampant through our society along with an obsession with 'reality' (what the ****s real about it?) TV and instant fame and success.............Meanders off topic, time to visit jetblast.......hangs head in shame...........

[FullWings]

I have to agree. If you trust me not to fly into something (deliberately that is), then you will have to take it on trust that I won't blow the plane up either.

If there are 'sleeper' pilots in the airlines then profiling and serious intelligence work are going to be the only ways of finding them out - no amount of security checkpoints or toothpaste confiscation will be much help.

The 'security industry' is just that - there is so much money and employment involved that it is almost a closed loop now; you don't hear many calling for less (but more effective) security, do you?

How's about this for an idea: get rid of all airport security but make the passengers check each other's luggage - assigned at random. At least the people doing the checking will have some motivation to do it well...

[RoyHudd]

Government over-reacting, Carnage? Is that conceivable? Nice post, I doubt the suspects would have had the wit to manufacture their explosive mixture and detonate it onboard. All eyes will forever be on bearded bottle-toting bums on their way to the lav, or trying to strike a match in 43B. Shoe-bomber didn't get far, I recall.

[MrBernoulli]

Carnage,

Yep, OK, my mistake with the terminology. Not 'sleeper' but someone who is already qualified and operating and is then 'turned'. This could be a pilot or cabin crew.

How often have you heard in the media from family/friends of some arrested/self-annihilated individual, how that individual was "so normal"/"we never suspected"/"must be some mistake". They may not necessarily wish to martyr themselves; indeed, they may be more useful to a terrorist organisation as someone to get something through security (liquid explosive, timers, etc), more than once, to pass on to another miscreant airside to eventually have all the items assembled airside with tragic results.

We have to remember that these groups are nutters by western standards and don't play to ANY rules. They only have to be lucky every now and again to make life difficult or the risks unacceptably high. We, on the other hand, have to be lucky all the time if we are to avoidd their desired result.

I hasten to add that I am not a Walter Mitty but over 2 decades in the military has given me healthy respect for the adage of 'know your enemy'. The security procedures are a pain in the backside but these folk will test the measures and barriers we place in their way ..... and test them again and again.

[Carnage Matey!]

So we're left with the possibility of a pilot being turned by AQ and we need to find ways to mitigate against this. The military clearly have ways and means of ascertaining whether or not they can trust their individuals so perhaps we need to take a leaf out of their book? Positive vetting for all UK licence holders requiring an airside pass accompanied with a biometric data ID. We give up a day each year for a medical, a day for SEP and 4 days for LPC & OPCs, whats another day for PV? They keep tabs on our persuasions and we verify who we are with our biometric IDs. The only problem I see with this is who's going to pay?

[Ignition Override]

Commander Danny, pardon my misunderstanding.

What I meant to suggest was that the so-called "authorities", to use the word very loosely, employ people who are experts at either personality or character (criminal) profiling-or whatever the "polit. correct" expression happens to be this week.
They are out there somewhere on the globe, but somehow can not be utilized to work in an airport concourse, as you suggested, because of economics (or national pride) being the priority, instead of safety.

Full Wings:

In the US, if you bother on your day off to go to your crewbase airport hub and attend a 2-hour class or so (which all the ground staff attend), you will be given a special ID card. With this extra ID card, you can leave the area of your aircraft "footprint" as needed. You can bypass security altogether, but only at your crewbase airport! This is how "out to lunch" our airport bureaucrats and TSA are. But we can taxi the jet to and from the runways anywhere we fly when Ground. Control says we are cleared.

What is interesting is that at smaller cities in Michigan, MS, South Dakota and Kansas City (not so small an airport), we can avoid the security checkpoints! Each city is like a different country. Once we are on the aircraft and arrive at the hub, we have access to each aircraft we fly by letting the gate agent match our name against his/her 'crewlist'. "Off we go into the wild blue yonder...".

[flyingbug]

Originally Posted by MrBernoulli

I totally disagree with the comments that pilots should be allowed to 'bypass' security in some form or another.

MrBernoulli, I absolutely agree with you that pilots should not bypass security; that is why pilots and other aircrew are subjected to security checks before being issued with airside passes. Passengers are not.

The current trend of seeing pilots walking through X-ray machines without toothpaste is not being performed in the interest of security, but for the titilation of unlooking passengers and the gratification of ill-informed policy makers. If you want to be searched to show solidarity with this policy, go through the passenger channels; otherwise show your security airside pass and go via crew channels.

[FullWings]

Ignition Override:

The UK has become a bit like that, with each airport deciding on a different security implementation. Sometimes they agree with the national rules, sometimes they don't; sometimes they accept an ID issued elsewhere in the UK, often they reject it. If you follow some of the other discussions on this forum, you'll see that places like Manchester are well up the list in terms of intimidation and malice: I think they could teach the Gestapo a thing or two.

For the last decade or so, pilots have reluctantly accepted the increases in security, even when we can see that a lot of them have been more for PR purposes than actual safety. I think, as aviation professionals, we have reached a watershed and the recent restrictions imposed are the metaphorical straw that breaks the camel's back. I'm glad to see that BALPA has called for a top-level conference to try and sort out some of this nonsense.

[tiggerific_69]

im sure certain UK Tabloids gaining security clearance then planting a fake bomb on an aircraft just to see how well security worked is part of the reason we're all subject to being treated as suspicious.