Air Marshals ar
e taught to disarm hijackers at close quarters. This criticism has been echoed by
others. Representative John J. Duncan, a Knoxville, Tennessee Republican, bluntly called the service a “needless, useless agency”, whose members have “a cushy, easy job”.
on to conclude that “I think they are doing almost no good at all.”
In
support of his statements, Rep. Duncan supported an amendment to freeze the FAM budget for 2010 at its current level. The measure was voted down, and the US House of Representatives ultimately approved the programme’s budget of US$860 million. In response to the agency’s defence of its mission, Duncan responded by noting that since 2001, FAMs had tallied slightly more than four arrests per year, which averaged out to approximately US$200 million per arrest. On 1 February 2010, The Washington Post reported that
He went
the President’s 2011 budget request included a 10% increase for the FAM programme, to US$950 million. The issue of the programme’s cost was exacerbated by the government’s response to the Christmas Day bombing attempt. Among other solutions, President Obama proposed an additional US$85 million for the programme, ostensibly to boost the marshals’ numbers and thereby increase the number of flights that could be covered by FAMs.
How Effective are FAMs? This effort deserves some scrutiny.
It
begs the question: did the President offer this proposal because it made sense, or as a politically-motivated, “feel good” measure to the American people? A CNN investigation, conducted in the aftermath of the Christmas Day
bombing attempt, concluded that the odds of a FAM being on board a flight in the US were approximately 5%. This figure assumed a number of 28,000 commercial flights daily in the US, and a FAM cadre of less than 4,000, many of whom “…are grounded for health and other reasons”, according to a source quoted in the Christian Science Monitor. Should the proposed increase in funding come to fruition, and given the figures published by CNN, an approximate 10% increase should result in a corresponding increase in flight coverage. Doing the maths, that extra US$85 million could produce an increase in coverage from 5% to 5.5%. That is a lot of money for ½ of a percentage point. Other reports allege that, in fact, less than 1% of flights are protected by FAM personnel.
Although this
number has been hotly contested by the TSA the controversy rages on. It is reported that the Service’s internal goal
“
...US$85 million could produce an increase in coverage from 5% to 5.5%. That is a lot of money for ½ of a percentage point...”
(articulated through a “flight coverage index”) seeks to cover 3% of flights; other reports give a figure of 5%. Accusations to the contrary give rise to a rapid defence of the present system by its government managers. The debate often devolves into semantics; what does “coverage” mean? What is a “flight”? Hard figures are difficult to come by inasmuch as the TSA refuses, citing security concerns, to release numbers of air marshals regularly assigned to flights or a percentage of flights covered on a daily basis. As the accusations and denials fly
to and fro, it is illuminating to step back from the fray and examine the issue anew. Assuming that the TSA is being entirely transparent, when did we acquiesce to the fact that the presence
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www.asi-mag.com June 2010 Aviationsecurityinternational
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