I'm certainly not a FAM, but I'd be surprised if they were happy about folks who didn't have their training or knew their procedures having sidearms on the plane. Especially, local law enforcement, where training standards can really run the gamut, from highly trained professionals to Barney Fife.

Are FFDO's trained by the same folks who train the FAMs or by FAMs themselves? That would seem logical, but I realize that logic may not be at play in these sorts of things.

There would have to be a sure procedure for the FAM to identify themselves to the FA in the case in which they needed to break cover. Otherwise, it would be possible that someone causes a situation, a fake FAM breaks cover and then has quite a bit of power on-board.

OK, so nobody knows there's an FAM on the plane. How do we know who is and is not an air marshal in an emergency?

If there's no way of knowing that these guys are who they claim to be because nobody on the flight has authenticated in advance, passengers and crew might have to assume that anyone with a gun who's doing something suspicious is a hijacker.

None of the pax will know what the secret FAM ID card looks like, so they can't judge whether it's real, and even if some of the FAs have, ID cards can be forged.

The second worst? Who's the worst then? FAMs themselves? :D

Please explain. I'm open to debate on this one.

As a LEO I like to see the other LEO's faces, which helps avoid a blue-on-blue event should the balloon go up. That said, I am NOT for face to face if it requires preboarding or any other type of overt meeting where God and everyone gets to now know who the people with guns are.

Do it away from the plane/gate/etc. and its cool. I'll buy the coffee. Doing it at the gate or on the plane? Suicide.

The gate agent, ticket agent and TSA has already verified them. How many is enough? Checking ID is not security, remember?

I thought checking ID is not security? :confused:

Its the tin that civilians want to see. LEOs want to see the creds.

Gate agents.

I would respectfully submit that this entire conversation is meaningless. There will never be another attempt to replicate 9/11 for many reasons. These would include, but not be limited to: a) change in the cockpit procedures; b) change in the cockpit doors; c) hiring of more FAM's; d) possibility that you might be stopped for taking a weapon on the flight; e) public awareness.

Why? Not because these safeguards are working (which is why this discussion is, IMHO, off-point). It is because they exist and, in combination, they might hinder a successful plan.

On 9/11 the chance that the flight crew would resist was less than 10% (it was procedure to cooperate); the door was irrelevant because of the procedure; there were very few FAM's; the weapons they allegedly used were legal (i.e. - no scanning errors were required - they were legal); and the public awareness (at least until the last of the 4 planes) was not raised.

In other words, on 9/11, the chance that the plot would succeed, on multiple planes, was well over 90%. Today, the chance that a *similar* plot would succeed, on multiple planes, is probably under 50%. So why invest resources in something that will probably fail, when you can do something which will probably succeed?

Why do we focus on airplanes? (Before you respond too quickly, don't say 9/11 - bombs on planes (liquids) have nothing to do with 9/11 - there were earlier examples of people blown up on planes, and there are other places where you could harm more people in a single incident than an airplane).

If they're flying completely in secret, the gate and ticket agents didn't necessarily verify. And none of them are on the plane in any event, so what good does that do in the middle of a situation?

So you could end up with a group who gets guns through security (plenty of ideas have been suggested on how to do that) and now they're on the plane claiming to be FAMs, but nobody on the plane can verify whether they are or not. The crew wouldn't know if they're FAMs or hijackers.

Exactly what I said. If no one securely authenticates these guys on the ground and transmits that info to the crew, then there's no way of knowing whether they're hijackers or FAMs.

ID cards, "tin" or other pieces of paper or plastic aren't proof of anything, no matter how fancy-looking. The only way to have a reasonable level of security (reasonable, but still not 100%) is for there to be a realtime authentication, with biometric, against a secure database or something like that.

Easy. In 99% of emergencies, you wait for the passengers and crew to get everything under control. Then if there are FAMs on board they'll usually ID themselves and "take it from there."

After all, the FAMs aren't actually supposed to help in most emergencies, for fear they would out themselves prematurely if the "emergency" is only a diversion for the real action the bad guys have in mind.

So in the situation described by Bruce Schneier in post #18, what do the passengers and crew do to get things under control?

And, once again, if the crew don't know who the FAMs are, how does an FAM identify himself at 30,000 feet in a credible manner?

Right, but what happens in the situation where it's unclear if the FAMs are really FAMs or hijackers creating an emergency and pretending to diffuse it?

The passengers subdue Men A, B and C, the FAs handcuff them all and the pilot lands the plane, just as they'd do if no FAM were on board in the first place.

Who cares? FAMs are virtually useless anyway.

Of course there are several hints to help sort things out. The pilots can radio to find out who the FAMs are. Presumably the crew knows what legit FAM id looks like. And the two guys with the sidearms are much more likely to be real FAMs than those without, since FAMs are known to pack heat and never work alone.

The bottom line is that I believe the whole FAM program should be scrapped. But I don't want to hijack yet another thread with that argument. After all, the FAM program is supposed to prevent hijackings, right? ;)

You WILL find out really, really fast who the FAMs are if you try that without the FA having to breathe a word.:rolleyes:

One of the contributing factors to the all-but-obvious white neon sign that reads "air marshal" above the air marshals is watching how the FAs defer to them. It's an unbelievably easy 'tell'.