2 Many-

Inteersting you brought that up. One thing we've been seeing a lot of on all of the news channels are reports on El Al security, with perhaps a tacit suggestion that this is what real airport security is. I agree, BTW.

However, does anybody have, for comparitive purposes, information on, say, the # of flights El Al operates per day, and the number of airports they serve, versus the # of flights/airports served by US carriers? For that matter, how much (on a rough percentage basis) of the cost of El Al security is absorbed by the Israeli government, and what would those dollar figures translate to if applied to the whole US system?

While I'm all for tighter security, and agree that there is a certain amount of "political will", as you call it (I'd call it a justifiable lack of political correctness) necessary to restore it, I think an examination of those figures, on a comparative basis, would reveal the virtual impossibility--both in terms of financial and human resources--of a constant El Al type of arrangement here in the U.S.

The real solution is to solve the problem on why we have terroism in the first place.

Security and military strikes will only go so far. A war on terroism w/o a political solution is a war we will loose.

We should tighten airport security but that will not stop attacks by other means on US soil.

I still go back to the simple but probably effective idea of having cameras on board. You have one on virtually every ATM in this country but we don't have any on planes. In between the cameras and cell phones on board working with ground law enforcement, they could possibly see how many people are attacking, the weapons used, how to best fight back and maybe avoid the final tragedy.

This would have also helped with cases of air rage in the past as it would have been possibly if the passengers were out of control or not. Sure discussion before was about invasion of privacy or who would want to sit and watch the video of a 14 hour transpacific flight to Asia. Now, I suppose many are asking what really happened on board and would like to have been be able to best avoid the incident again.


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"Fly me to the moon and let me earn alot of miles."

That sounds too much like those in the middle east quoted after the attack saying that the US is really at fault for this because of it's policies.

Bull****!

We will find the people with no regard for innocent human life, lock them in a room far far away and then let them practice suicide bombing on each other all they want.

No one's political agenda makes this kind of attack on humanity acceptable or allowed to be an excuse in any way.

If you want an easy guidebook in the world to seperate Right and Wrong - look at who the groups target civillian or military. As clear as night and day.

If I recall from a very good interview with an El Al security consultant in Conde Nast Traveler Magazine not so long ago, El Al has several "rings" of security, beginning with airport access roads, with each ring collapsing until you get on the plane. Yes, many are invisible to the pax, but many are quite visible if one is paying attention, and most of these are certainly not trade secrets. They're more like best practices. A lot of these measures do not inconvenience pax, but they do require pax to check in MORE THAN 2 HOURS in advance. And, as far as I was concerned, they seemed to profile and search MORE THAN 10% of the pax on the four flights I took into and out of Tel Aviv. Maybe if the plane is full of young Jewish American business school students attending a high tech investment conference in Israel, less than 10% of those pax get search, but they certainly search more than 10% of the non-Jews on the plane.

Realistically, El Al can do it because it is a small airline and don't have too many flights a day. The interrogators and the hand searchers (and they search every single item once they've identified you as a risk) are trained professionals in Israel. They have not only completed military service, they are patriotic and have no problem inconveniencing anyone if it meant protecting Israel's national integrity.

Going to an El Al model at every airport in the United States is going to be difficult, if not impossible. From a human resources perspective, we don't have the trained people YET. Some renovations to the plane would also be necessary. How many commercial planes are flying in the US right now? The cockpits need to be reinforced. The cargo hold might need to have special compartments/containers that are blast proof. Then there's the issue of armed marshalls. There's at least one armed air marshall on board every El Al flight. And I believe that the last line of defense is that El Al pilots, all of whom are ex-military, are also armed. I'm not sure if US airline pilots are ready mentally or want to be carrying guns in the cockpit.

I should add that I never missed any of my El Al flights because I either got to the airport at least 2.5 hours in advance or I got to the airport right before the check-in counter closed and everyone else had already been questioned and searched. And once I got on the El Al flights, I felt very safe.

El Al has indeed got the perfect solution, you don't have to fight a hijacker on board becuase he/she will NEVER get on board. MSNBC did a bit on them, the ground checks are very thourough, it is impossible to prevent a disaster while sitting in a pressurized tin can flying miles high just under the speed of sound without police, army etc... IF something happens there no technology will be able to stop it, every measure you take will be useless after a short time when someone figures out how to bypass it. The current US measures of stopping problems BEFORE take off are IMHO the best and only solutions, no matter how much trouble and delays it causes.

Scott --

Unfortunately, the current security measures being implimented by the US would not have done anything to stop the tragedy of what happened before.

And yes, El Al does do tremendous amounts of screening and checking before people get on the planes.

However, they also have significant machinery (procedurally) to handle anything that might go wrong once the plane is in the air. They know that it's not possible to have 100% security in advance. They recognize that even an El Al Pilot could be a terrorist, and have plans to deal with that.

As the head of El Al security has said before congress multiple times in the past 10 years, as long as the US continues to pay security screeners minimum wage salaries, and give them days/weeks of training instead of hours, they will perform minimum wage work, and no procedural/policy changes will enhance security. End of story.

Do Marshalls earn frequent flyer miles ? What a job !!

Well, as long as El Al has far more security than anyone else, I would agree. If every airline had as much security as El Al, then someone would have a reason figure out how to beat it. Right now, a hijacker really doesn't need to go through all that trouble. The fact that El Al is "safe" can just as well be because they aren't being targeted, since so many easier targets are readily available.

http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/meast/....ap/index.html

An interesting article regarding El Al security....Some things the US might start thinking about doing....inconvenient or not, it does save lives....

Perhaps the most sobering part of Israeli security is the final part, the part that says that if all else has failed and the plane does get taken over, that it gets shot down immediately. I know we weren't ready to go to that extent before Tuesday, but I wonder how it looks to us now. I for one would want to feel really, really confident that all security measures taken prior to my flight taking off were well founded and effective, and not just politically correct.

Turn on CNN. John Ashcroft live just announced air marshalls on flights.

Yep, MSNBC just reported that the marshalls are plain clothed, armed, FBI agents.

Let me tell you something about weapons: every passenger has two of the most deadly weapons with himself or herself every time they board a plane, being their two hands.
Trained and conditioned, the hand is a swift and silent killer; the index finger can stun,
immobilize, or kill; the heel can break or kill; the thumb can do all these and more.
Almost anything can become a weapon when used
as one.

Marshals are one darn good idea as are the
others from Professor Moriarty.