AVSEC Opinion T
By Andy Downs
his March, a flight attendant who was not on her medication attacked the flight crew of American Airlines flight 2332. FBI agents at Dallas Fort Worth have said that they will not press charges due to the obvious mental health issues the flight attendant was facing at the time. The same month a Jet Blue captain had a similar episode - the FBI opted to guard the man in hospital and press charges.
“…it is ludicrous to think a pilot has any command authority during a hijacking…”
Why the difference in how the authorities handled these two rather similar events? It reminds me of US Customs when I was dispatching cargo aircraft into and out of the US. One Customs port would want paperwork, whilst another would be looking for something entirely different. At one port you would have to meet the Customs agent to leave the country yet, elsewhere, the very same week you could be asked to slip the yellow sheet (paperwork) under the Customs agent’s door at the airport and then take care of the rest when you re-entered the United States.
Now take the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and how each Flight Standards District Office handles the oversight of the air charter companies or airlines in their area. One Principal Operations Inspector will want to see detail in the paperwork and another won’t even check it. A violation to one is just a “Hey, don’t do that again…” to another. We have all been there in the business. The laws are the same in the books but implemented very differently depending on who is on the scene at the time.
So if this is not a new
story, why write about it? Well, think of how the
authorities may handle your plane if you ever have the misfortune to be hijacked. What one airport police officer might do won’t come close to the reactions of the SWAT team from another airport. Yet the common denominator is always the same - there is someone in the cockpit in charge, and that is the pilot- in-command. I lecture a great deal to law
enforcement officers all over the US. The attitudes of each of their departments vary considerably as to how best respond to a hijacking. One department will block off a plane and try to negotiate; another department thinks the only way to keep an airplane on the ground is to shoot it up! The only thing they seem to agree on is that they don’t want to rely on the pilot- in-command making good decisions when under tremendous stress. As one former federal agent put it to me, “It is ludicrous to think a pilot has any command authority during a hijacking.” Another one told me that the crew should, “leave it to the professionals.” The reasoning behind these attitudes is a lack of understanding between the aviation community and the law enforcement officers who are called out to handle these situations. The issue over the pilot-in-command’s authority was what resulted in my father being killed in his hijacking in 1971. It was a subject that was the basis for the legal decision in the civil case Downs vs. USA 522 F.d2 990; Aug 1975; Sixth Circuit. The FBI
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ignored the pleas from my father to stay away from the plane and decided to start shooting at the plane with the stated goal of grounding it. The result was the hijacker killed everyone on board. The interesting thing about my
father’s case was what had happened one year prior to his last flight in Jacksonville, Florida. FBI Special Agent Frank Burns stated under oath that he had worked a hijacking where he had been in command of the FBI agents on the ground; the situation was almost identical. Yet Agent Burns had respected the pilot-in-command’s authority of that flight. When he was subsequently asked what the outcome had been, his answer was that the pilot came back a couple of weeks later and paid for the fuel! The men and women that make up the law enforcement ranks are good people. They perform a dangerous job and are to be thanked for their service. However the crews that keep millions safe everyday are also to be commended for making tough calls and bringing people back home safely. The information gap between law enforcement and aviation needs to be closed, or at least that gap needs to start closing. The only way to accomplish that goal is for both communities to start training together so that they both understand each other and their missions. Command means different things to
different people. Who is in command during a hijacking once the plane is on the ground is a matter that is much less clear these days. At this moment in time, it will be decided by the officers on the ground with the guns. They may be right or they may be wrong, but there is little to guide them other than their gut feeling and their past experiences in working cases outside the airport perimeter. As well all know it’s a different world out there…
The author is a 20 year veteran of the aviation industry who has owned or operated air charter operations and ground handling operations throughout the US and in six other countries. He is writing a book on the hijacking in which his father, Brent Downs, was killed in 1971, as well as producing a documentary on the hijacking called “58 November.” He can be contacted via email at
Andy@58November.com or through his website
www.58November.com
April 2012 Aviationsecurityinternational
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