Do you feel safer flying, knowing that undercover air marshals are likely on board?
Many do. Though the air marshal program is more than 35 years old, it expanded significantly after 9-11. Or so we were told.
CNN is reporting today that fewer than 1 percent of commercial airlines flights in the United States each day have a marshal on board.
How does that break down? Well, out of an estimated 28,000 daily flights in the US, around 280 have some kind of undercover law enforcement officer that can thwart a terrorist incident, or any other situation that could disrupt a flight and endanger passengers, CNN says.
The network notes that this comes as the Transportation Security Administration in recent months has been able to get contraband – guns, stuff to make bombs – past airport security.
CNN bases its report on more than a dozen interview with air marshals and pilots, who confirmed the shortfall.
The TSA is calling CNN’s report erroneous. But it is certainly not helping its own case, as officials in the administration refuse to disclose how many marshals are regularly assigned to flights or just how many regular flights, as a percentage, are covered.
If the TSA thinks CNN is full of it, fine. But then it better refute the network’s findings with facts, rather than hiding behind some predicable Bush League nonsense about how disclosing information could threaten national security.
Air marshals might not make you feel safer, but they do for a lot of other travelers, and if we are not as well covered as we’ve been led to expect in the years following 9-11 then there should be some accounting for that.
