Well Bear, I got into this a few times, and some folks thought I was part of the problem while I was actually trying to be part of the solution. It is a bit of a long winded story but my involvement was for a solution to a different problem. At immediate issue was theft at US security checkpoints. My position was that because everyone and their dog was allowed to the departure gates. The MO of the theives was well known. On average, there are 5 well wishers to every traveller. This made for very crowded departure areas, but also made for busy security staff, (5 times that of Canadian security staff) and theives knew that staff had the law of large numbers against them.
For over ten years I knew the staff if not by name at least by face in places like Saskatoon, Calgary, Edmonton. Because of workload in the US the turnaround time for security staff was 90 days!! They had no hope of having experienced help. Security was so poor and unfocused, (they would more closely scrutinize flight crew than cleaning crew) that a friend's wife went through 6 checkpoints with 6 .45 long Colt cartridges in her purse, 3 of which were snake shot and 3 of which were body armour piercing only issued to special forces. My wife went through several with 3 shotgun shells in her purse. Purses are the repositories of lost winning lottery tickets and three year old prescription reciepts, but I digress. As flight crew I got stopped for having a spent .45ACP casing in one of my bags.
Mine and others' issues with security didn't exactly fall on deaf ears, but was certainly met with the inertia of US policy makers. Without them having an incentive it is like trying to move a locomotive by hand.
The cockpit door policy was probably the worst kept secret in the industry. If it was locked at all it was on take off and landing, the absolute worst times because it is the main route for rescuers to get in if something did go horribly wrong. In cruise it was unlocked, on several occations I would turn around and see a dumbstruck passenger who mistook the cockpit door for the lav door.
The idea that hijackers might take over aircraft and use them as missiles was well known for years prior. Again, the inertia of policy makers was an impediment. At that point it was just a possibility, hijackers just weren't suicidal, and suicide bombings were a rarity. With that, given all the other stuff that people were dealing with, it just wasn't a high priority. It was like seeing the iceberg off in the distance and saying we have time to deal with that later.
The probable targets were known, but with thousands of possible opportunities and no uniform policies to prevent such an attack it was just a matter of when. The folks who claim how hard it is to hit such a target don't seem to have the experience to back it up. It is far easier to hit a target at high speed than at low speed, doing a precision approach in a heavy jet is a cynch compared to doing one in a light twin or single engine airplane.
Before 9/11 pilots in this country carried things like large knives, leatherman type tools and such, now all such things are verboten. The US, which had previously prohibited firearms in the cockpit, now has a Federal Flight Deck Officer program, however, it is totally voluntary and many pilots who take part do so on their own dime. As for security, flight crew are still the most highly scrutinized of all staff. Feel safer now?
