Word: tsa
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Some participants accused the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) - which originally opposed arming pilots - of designing a program so rule-bound and cumbersome that it was guaranteed to fail. At one point, according to pilots who talked to TIME on background, there was even talk of a mass walkout...
...plan to arm pilots was passed by Congress in 2002 after more than a year of intensive lobbying by a group of flyers and the National Rifle Association, who outmaneuvered opponents including the airlines, other pilots, the TSA and, originally, the White House. The airlines see nothing but trouble in having a firearm - which could in theory be wrestled away by a hijacker, damage the aircraft if fired, or lead to the death of someone who meant no harm - in the same confined space as the plane's controls. Many pilots, on the other hand, want as much security...
...congressional decision obliged TSA to drop its opposition and design a training program. Its technical aspects, including marksmanship and non-lethal self-defense, were excellent, pilots concurred. But after the 48 flyers - selected from a list of volunteers to bring diversity of gender, type of aircraft, corporation, age and experience - were two days into their training, they got into a combative exchange with a TSA lawyer, sharply questioning some of the rules he was laying out and at one point laughing at his response. That brought a reprimand from a TSA psychologist, and then from the TSA official...
...Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the federal agency in charge of keeping the nation's skies safe, spent much of the past year vetting, hiring and training 54,000 passenger and baggage screeners. But because of severe budget problems, that force is about to start shrinking. TSA chief Admiral James Loy told Congress recently that 3,000 airport-screener positions would be cut by June 1. But sources tell TIME that a TSA task force has been working since mid-March on even more drastic spending-cut options; a source estimates that the agency could be as much as $1 billion...
...they are required to drop the curtain, the airlines are making a request of their own: that the FAMs be seated through the entire plane rather than in valuable first-class seats, where they often sit now. Industry sources say the TSA will have a difficult time persuading the marshals, many of whom are already bored and exhausted by the job, to agree. TSA spokesman Brian Turmail says assertions that morale is poor among the FAMs are "absolutely wrong." He says the TSA "is intent on providing the highest level of security." --By Sally B. Donnelly