TSA employees have been working without pay during a partial shutdown of DHS over demands to reform immigration enforcement.
More than 400 Transportation Security Administration workers have quit since a partial government shutdown that began on Feb. 14 left them working without pay, the Department of Homeland Security said.
Funding was shut off to DHS over demands by Democrats for reforms at Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection following alleged abuses and the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens by federal agents in Minneapolis earlier this year.
There has also been a national callout rate of 10% at TSA on more than half the days of the last week, Lauren Bis, acting assistant secretary for public affairs at DHS, said Saturday in response to questions.
You think that locked cockpit doors are the ONLY thing keeping trouble from happening in the sky? What’s to stop them from killing and torturing passengers, lighting fires, setting off bombs, etc.? All you really need to do is pierce a lithium battery, and you have 1000°C fire that is extremely difficult to extinguish. That will bring down a plane as surely as killing the pilot.
The locked cockpit door is the last line of defense. It’s not a good idea to get rid of every other defense before that. It’s pretty important to keep trouble off the plane in the first place.
But they do prevent hijackings…
They prevent hijackers from getting into the cockpit, but you can hijack or bring down a plane in many other ways.
Damage or destroy, sure. But to me, hijacking means taking control of the aircraft, and I don’t see that happening without cockpit access. (Not that doors are impenetrable, but still.)
Oh, come on, now we’re just arguing about personal definitions of words. If a guy is killing people and setting off bombs on a plane, he’s a hijacker, whether he is demanding a destination or not.
Luggage still goes through security scans.