Jose Martinez, The Houston Chronicle
NEW YORK -- The U.S. counterpart to the Israeli air marshal program is having a hard time getting off the ground.
Critics of the bulked-up federal air marshal program say it can’t possibly provide the coverage needed to shield all planes from an onboard attacker.
“It’s not the optimum solution,” said Sam Mayer of the Allied Pilots Association, the union for American Airlines pilots. “We’re just not going to get to the point where we have a team on every airline providing security.” The government employed 33 plainclothes air marshals prior to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, but the newly formed Transportation Security Administration has pressed thousands of new hires into service since then.
“They’re up to full staffing,” said agency spokesman Brian Doyle. “They have a very sophisticated and very sound system to place those air marshals on flights.”
It’s part of a push for better airport security by the government, which announced Tuesday that it has staffed U.S airports with more than 40,000 passenger screeners.
The revamped marshals program came under fire in August for an incident in which two air marshals subdued an unruly man, then held the remaining passengers at gunpoint until the plane landed. The man was not charged.
Air marshals are supposed to undergo 12 weeks of training before being assigned to flights. However, the Transportation Security Administration, which oversees the marshals program, can only staff a fraction of the more than 30,000 daily U.S. flights.
Doyle said there’s no comparison between the well-established in-flight security used by Israel’s El Al and the nascent air marshal program in the United States.
“Israel is a small country and the system they have in place is in one major airport,” he said. “We have to cover all of them.”
Arming pilots would be a safer security bet, Mayer said. “We want the ability to protect that aircraft,” he said. Commercial airline pilots are allowed to have guns in the cockpit under the homeland security bill Congress approved Tuesday.