posted on September 12, 2001 02:10:51 AM
It's too bad that the other crews (or passengers) did not manage to complete the same. The outcome would have been very different.
posted on September 12, 2001 07:41:25 AM
Pilots are not required to go through the same stringent security measures as 'regular' people. There has been much ado about this issue in the past ten years or so in the aviation industry. The pilots' unions do not want to expose their members to these security measures for various reasons, but I have personally spoken with pilots who believe that everyone (pilots included) would be safer if all crewmembers were put through the same safety measures as everyone else.
Remember that Egyptian pilot who was at the controls when the aircraft went down recently who was saying, "It is in God's hands" on the blackbox recorder?
And what about the off duty FedEx pilot who brought the harpoon on board several years ago, attacked his fellow crewmembers, and intended to crash the plane into the Memphis FedEx headquarters in protest of his impending firing?
Maybe the times will be changing soon. I certainly hope so.
[ edited by squinkle99 on Sep 12, 2001 07:41 AM ]
Where did you hear that the knives were ceramic? We have been listening to CNN all morning and nothing about such has been reported.
Oddly enough, 2 years ago, we flew to Las Vegas for a major business convention....As a 60 year old grandmother, I decided to test the security at the Atlanta Air Port, feeling that I actually wouldn't get in trouble even if the test failed. We have been knife dealers for many years, and were heading to a convention where knife wholesalers were present, so I just dropped a knife in my purse, feeling if it were found, that I could easily by pass problems, considering my age, my business, and where we were going.
Guess what, it was in my purse, run through the x-ray system at Atlanta International, and wasn't found. We even had to change planes in Phoenix, and still nothing. The knife in my purse made it all the way to Las Vegas. This told me that, what appeared to be security at air ports, was a fraud, that we were obviously at risk.That was 2 years ago!
I wanted to report the lax security, but actually didn’t know who to report it to, or who would actually care. If anyone in authority had been testing the major air ports, Atlanta being the busiest in the US, then they already knew that security at the air ports wasn’t working and obviously didn’t need me to tell them, and apparently didn't care.