I’ve had some time to really think
about this and for me, it goes something like this:
1. We know we need to be careful about who
is around commercial aircraft. They are the most vulnerable.
2. Yet, we also know that our stance has
changed since 9/11, we no longer, passengers and pilots alike, are willing to
be obedient to some nut case who tries to take control of an airplane.
3. In WWII, groups of citizens were asked
to patrol beaches and do other things that we now only let military and police
do.
4. To my knowledge, since 9/11, there
hasn't been a threat to passenger aircraft from the small feeder airports (like
ours, Walker Field in Grand Junction,
CO). If there has, it hasn't
materialized into any harm or any kind of hijacking. (Someone can correct me
here if I'm wrong). So to me, it sounds like security already in place has been
effective.
5. At our airport, there is a big red box
painted on the ramp that is restricted, no one can go in except those that have
gone through TSA's security. Seems to me that it would be easier to protect
this box, than the entire airport.
The government has a great resource, it's
citizens. They are overlooking this resource (this is part of what is so
frustrating to me) and are not factoring in the fact that most of us can be of
great assistance in protecting commercial and public assets.
Additionally, the pilots of those
commercial airplanes don't want bad people doing bad things to their airplanes.
There are more stakeholders in protecting aircraft than just the Government,
and I believe these stakeholders are more effective in deterring a threat than
the Government will ever be.
The frustrating thing for me is that there
are alternatives to blanket, draconian rules that make it difficult to enjoy
aviation. While expressing our frustration at this problem and saying 'no' to
the TSA's SD, we also need to help these guys understand that we can
effectively take care of this problem, how we can do it, and why it is in their
(TSA's) best interest to let us do so.
It just plain isn't acceptable for the TSA
to secretly go about stymieing general aviation's access to public assets,
there is a better way to do this.
We need our representatives to understand
this.
Kevin