Word: cockpits
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...billion financial bailout and convincing Congress to take over the costs of airport security, small airlines went to work on on-board safety. Given their tiny fleets, enthusiastic employees and more nimble management, micro-carriers like JetBlue Airways and Frontier Airlines were able to have entirely redesigned, and reinforced cockpit door designs within two weeks. Officials from both airlines tell TIME that they are also making plans to install hidden cameras to monitor the passenger cabin from the cockpit."Past practice has been to wait and see what others will do," explains Thomas Nunn, Frontier's Director of Safety. "This...
...Passengers will notice a difference: JetBlue's new, Kevlar-packed doors are thicker than the traditional ones, which had a lightweight, honeycombed interior. A bluntly-worded placard now reads, "Reinforced armor-plated door locked from inside cockpit only." Flight attendants for the New York-based airline will also change their safety briefings to make sure passengers take note of the new barrier. What the public won't see is the multiple titanium locks that the pilots slide in place once the door is shut. The doors, which were designed by JetBlue's own engineers, are costing the privately-held JetBlue...
...little guys skipped the interim solutions favored by majors like United and American, such as rigging a horizontal bar across the cockpit door, chiefly because they could: the big carriers have hundreds of planes to retrofit, and that takes time and money. Frontier, which has both Boeing and Airbus aircraft in its 31-plane fleet, decided that the bars weren't up to the job. "[That bar] is simply a feel-good measure," says one pilot from a major carrier. Frontier's engineers were unable to find any acceptable hardened cockpit doors quickly and eventually built their own from scratch...
...Making the cockpit inaccessible during flight is important, but further steps are necessary. The airlines are divided on how best to approach them. "There are lots of security issues," says one big carrier source, "But first we need to get rid of incompetent screeners. That's why the federal government should take that function over." Mesa's Ornstein counters, "The industry shouldn't be complaining about screeners - it should be moving towards airlines creating their own corps of flight security officers." The major carriers say they're waiting for federal air marshals. In the meantime, Mesa's security people will...
...carry-on baggage, the new and powerful x-ray machines that will slice and dice baggage onscreen, the armed sky marshals ready to drop any prospective terrorist in their tracks. Nor will it be the pilots armed with hollow point bullets ready to defend the sanctum of the cockpit, or any other high-tech or high-force solution. Rather, the most intimidating obstacle in a hijacker’s mind will be the tens or hundreds of passengers who will believe the worst of their imaginations. The hijackers on the 11th played on our expectations of the credible outcomes...