The TSA vs. the FFDO (long)

[unixronin]

John Hay Rabb's Second Amendment column in this month's Guns & Ammo magazine is titled Cuffed in the Cockpit, and contains some interesting revelations you won't hear on the news about the Federal Flight Deck Officer (FFDO) armed-pilot program.  I do not know of an online copy of this article.  I am therefore going to reproduce here not the complete article, but several of the most relevant large chunks of it, with occasional comments, and hope in good faith that my quoting falls under "fair use" guidelines.

The Federal Flight Deck Officer (FFDO) armed airline pilots program has been troubled by inadequate training and low pilot participation -- just normal growing pains.  But the situation has gone from bad to worse.  The flying public is no safer now than it was before the FFDO program began.

The FFDO program's fundamental goal is to provide appropriately screened and trained pilots with firearms to defend the cockpits of their aircraft against unauthorized entry.  For some inexplicable reason, the Bush Administration fought to prevent the establishment of the FFDO program.  [Inexplicable?  Ha!]  Fortunately, Congress spoke, and the FFDO program became law.  Unfortunately, it soon became apparent that the Transportation Safety Authority (TSA), which oversees the FFDO, had no intention of complying with Congressional direction about how to establish and administer the program.

[...]

Trained pilots armed with pistols would markedly improve security against potential terrorists.  But a pilot cannot effectively use a gun if he cannot gain access to it in a matter of seconds.  That could be difficult, given the way TSA has structured the FFDO gun-handling-and-storage protocol.  Unlike other armed federal law enforcement officers, FFDOs must keep their guns in locked containers inside nondescript luggage.  This raises a number of problems.  For instance, baggage handlers have already lost an estimated 300 FFDO firearms.  [Emphasis mine.  This is particularly appalling when you consider there's less than 800 FFDOs presently flying.]  Even if an FFDO manages to get his firearm successfully aboard the aircraft, he only has access to it when he is actually in the cockpit.  If he leaves the cockpit for any reason, he must lock the gun in its container.  The unarmed pilot then becomes vulnerable; the co-pilot or any other flight-deck officer could not gain access to the gun.

There are some 130 federal agencies that employ armed officers, [...]  However, it's not clear that these armed officers are authorized to use their weapons on board an airliner.  The TSA has stipulated that an FFDO pilot may only use his weapon inside the cockpit.  Consequently, it's simple to imagine a scenario in which several armed federal officers are on an airliner, but none of them is allowed (let alone trained) to use his weapon.  [...]

The TSA has further hamstrung the FFDO program with a grievously flawed screening and training process.  Even though all FAA-licensed pilots must already undergo routine periodical psychological evaluations, the TSA has laid on additional extraordinary psychological testing requirements for FFDO applicants, including a three-hour written psychological test followed by a long interview with a TSA psychologist.  [...]

[...]  A pilot who is also a retired Air Force colonel said, "The Air Force considered me psychologically sound enough to be directly responsible for nuclear weapons.  Yet a TSA psychologist has determined that I'm unreliable to carry a weapon on my own airliner."

A military reserve pilot who flies F-16s as well as airliners was asked by a TSA psychologist if he thought he could shoot someone if necessary.  This pilot flies lethal fighter jets and carries a sidearm while on reserve duty, and he answered the psychologist's question in the affirmative.  He was inexplicably dropped from the FFDO program.

[...]  One FFDO trainee -- a retired Air Force colonel with 25 years experience as a commercial pilot, who held high Air Force security clearances and had access to nuclear weapons, was a fighter wing commander and a military firearms instructor -- washed out of the FFDO program with no reason given.  Another trainee was a federal law enforcement officer for 23 years and held high security clearances and trained at the FBI Academy.  He was almost done with the FFDO training and was expelled one hour before course completion without explanation.  [Emphasis mine.  Gee, you could almost think the TSA didn't WANT anyone well-qualified to complete the program, huh?]

[...]

APSA President Captain David Mackett laid blame for the stumbling FFDO program squarely at the feet of TSA.  "Great strides could be made in improving the program," he said, "if the TSA were not so blatantly antagonistic to it."  [Gee, ya think?]

Some members of Congress who supported original FFDO legislation thought they had heard just about enough.  Then they read news reports about an intimidating e-mail message TSA allegedly sent to some FFDOs who had complained about the program.  The message reportedly said, "Recent public disclosure of SSI (Sensitive Security Information) by FFDOs in the media, to law enforcement gatherings and [to] Congressmen [emphasis mine] is most alarming and a serious breach of security."  [Oops.]

The last thing you want to do in Washington is to tell someone they should not talk to Congress -- it's like waving a red flag in front of a bull.  Partly in response to the offensive e-mail message, several members of Congress drafted The Cockpit Security Technical Questions And Improvements Act of 2004, a bill that would essentially strip the TSA of most of its authority over the FFDO program.  [...]

Here I'm going to stop quoting and just summarize.  The bill has more than 50 House co-sponsors, including Dan Mica (R-Florida), Chairman of the Aviation Subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.  Senator Jim Bunning (R-Kentucky) has prepared an identical bill for the Senate.  The bill's provisions include:

• FFDOs would be allowed to carry their firearms concealed onto, and on, the plane just like any other federal officer, and would have authority to use them anywhere on the plane if needed.
• All airline pilots who have active, retired or reserve military status (that's about 70% of them) and who have had military firearms training, and all airline pilots who are active or retired law-enforcement officers, would be automatically approved as active FFDOs.  They would be required to complete an approved instruction program within 120 days of appointment.  This would increase the number of FFDOs from the current 800 or so to a substantial proportion of the 100,000 commercial pilots in the US.
• Any FAA-licensed commercial pilot not prohibited by federal law from carrying a firearm would automatically be approved as an FFDO without further psychological screening.
• All newly-approved FFDOs would still have to complete approved training course before being sworn in, but numerous private facilities in the US would be certified to train FFDOs to augment the current single TSA training facility in New Mexico.  (Why not just take training out of the TSA's hands already?  I'll bet the failure rate at the private facilities is a tenth of that at the TSA's facility, because they'll be trying to certify FFDOs, not fabricate reasons to flunk them out.)
• To ensure a clear chain of command in the case of an in-flight incident on an aircraft carrying both an FFDO and Federal air marshals or other armed Federal officers, any aircraft pilot who is an FFDO would automatically be the senior law enforcement officer on the plane.
• FFDOs would be specifically authorized to disclose any information about the FFDO program to any member of Congress, to improve Congressional oversight.

The short story:  The TSA has hated the very idea of the FFDO program from the start, and has evidently been doing its level best to sabotage and scuttle it.  There's no guarantee that the Cockpit Security Act will pass; but if it does, the FFDO program will be implemented the way it was originally intended to be, and there won't be a goddamned thing the TSA can do about it except cry into their beer.

Comments

[sierra-nevada.livejournal.com]

Um, why does the TSA hate the FFDO program?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Basically because they're terrified of the possibility than an armed pilot might go postal and start shooting up the plane.

Hey, TSA guys, reality check: If the pilot wants to go postal, he's in charge of a hundred-ton airliner. He can do a hell of a lot more damage to a hell of a lot more people with that airliner than he can with a gun.

[sierra-nevada.livejournal.com]

e.g. Egyptair 990.

Police forces hate an armed citizenry - it forces them to be polite unless they want to get shot at.