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I was a Federal Air Marshal from the period of early 2011 to this month. I completed the two phases of training soon after joining, and started flying not long after that. I did a pretty significant stint as a VIPR (Visual Intermodal Prevention and Response) unit member, which has a bunch of TSA assets that can include FAMs. I will not answer questions that are classified in any way, or could potentially harm FAMs, such as numbers, policies, or seating locations. I can talk about the life of a FAM, or even interactions and how the airlines look at us and treat us, along with our own (terrible) agency. The service is very adversarial to the people that work for it, which was one of the major aspects that caused me to leave. I can talk about the broken aspect of the TSA, the weirdness that is the San Francisco transit systems, and life traveling 5 of the 7 days of a week, sometimes more. Shooting in the FAM service is also interesting and much more emphasized. It was a pretty good, yet difficult job, only due to how tired you are and how bad your agency treated you. I will look back fondly on it, but it was time for me to move on to something that required a bit more thought and had a bit more vertical movement capable. There are other issues that caused me to want to leave, also, but I'll save them in case anyone is interested. Edit: Hooray for thread tags. If a mod could change this, I would appreciate it.
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Oct 16, 2015 03:37
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Do people ever try to figure out who (or if there is) an air marshall on their flight? Have you heard of that actually succeeding?
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Oct 16, 2015 03:42
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Do you get frequent flyer miles? How about TSA pre-check / Global entry? How are flights assigned? Do you have to have seniority to get the Caribbean flights instead of flying to Albany or some other shithole every time?
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Oct 16, 2015 04:02
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What background did you come from? Was it law enforcement or similar, or was this kind of jumping right into that kind of thing for you? Do you have any interesting stories about things you had to intervene in (that won't compromise classified stuff or anything, obviously)? Do the pilots/crew know you're on the plane or who you are if they know a marshal is aboard? Sorry if that's a policy thing you can't answer, I was just kind of curious as to whether they know you're there or if they're all "what the gently caress" if something goes down and suddenly there's a guy there getting poo poo under control.
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Oct 16, 2015 04:25
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When they come by to get drink orders, what do you get? Do you get tired of peanuts and snack mix? How do you not gain a thousand pounds by sitting all day and eating in airports a lot? Can you talk in general about being an Air Marshall and if it actually does any good? Is there any hope of either abolishing the TSA or giving the agency as a whole some common sense?
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Oct 16, 2015 05:20
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photomikey posted:How do you not gain a thousand pounds by sitting all day and eating in airports a lot?
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Oct 16, 2015 05:23
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I'll try to answer these in order.quote:Do people ever try to figure out who (or if there is) an air marshall on their flight? Have you heard of that actually succeeding? I've sat next to people before that have asked if I knew how the Air marshal was, or if I had any thoughts on who it was. As for succeeding, I've never seen it for the general populace, but I've also come to realize that most people don't even think about there being an air marshal on the flight most of the time. quote:Do you get frequent flyer miles? How about TSA pre-check / Global entry? It is a non-revenue flight, so you do not get miles for it. The ticket actually bypasses the payment part and is generated right out of DC. We don't have any special provisions or get paid for global entry, although we can get it. As for pre-check, we don't need it as we don't go through security. I can't talk as to how flights are assigned simply because it varies from office to office. There is SUPPOSED to be no seniority assessed on how flights are given, but we know that isn't quite the case. Where I was, each separate squad got a different "area" of flights every quarter, and it rotated around pretty regularly. Sometimes if you are given what's known as recovery, you might get a good flight if someone calls in sick or has a problem and you are on standby. quote:What background did you come from? Was it law enforcement or similar, or was this kind of jumping right into that kind of thing for you? Do you have any interesting stories about things you had to intervene in (that won't compromise classified stuff or anything, obviously)? Do the pilots/crew know you're on the plane or who you are if they know a marshal is aboard? Sorry if that's a policy thing you can't answer, I was just kind of curious as to whether they know you're there or if they're all "what the gently caress" if something goes down and suddenly there's a guy there getting poo poo under control. I came from a Naval Intelligence background, with some work in systems administration, too. This was jumping right into it for me and getting my foot in the door there. I'll go look up some stories I have, most of them are pretty dull. A guy named Clay Biles wrote a book called Unsecure Skies that was actually talking about the office I came from. It's pretty good on the stories, although its dramatized heavily. The pilots do know, as they are the ones in command of the plane. As to who else knows, that I can't really go into. Most of the stories and arrests have to deal with terrible flight attendants or drunk people. quote:When they come by to get drink orders, what do you get? Do you get tired of peanuts and snack mix? How do you not gain a thousand pounds by sitting all day and eating in airports a lot? I usually got coffee or cranberry juice, and a lot of water. Making yourself have to piss was a good way to keep from falling asleep. I usually didn't eat at all on the plane, I'm a weird duck that way. We work out a lot, and have fantastic gyms in the field offices, but we are also trained to police ourselves with what we eat. Most of us are very active, but there are some super huge fatties that are disgusting and really should be fired because they can't do their job. THAT BEING SAID, I have never seen such an amazing cross section of backgrounds in my life, with a ridiculously heavy amount of people coming from a special operations background. That really surprised me, so there's a strong culture of fitness and fighting in the agency. It most definitely does do good, but it's not something you can quantify really, because if we have to do something, it means that all the other layers broke down. The mystique and legend of the agency is a huge deterrent factor, which is why information about flights covered and how many there are flying is a closely guarded secret. The other aspects of the organization, such as VIPR, are looked upon differently depending on where they work. In the Bay Area, surprisingly, VIPR is loved by the local police and asked to work with them all the time. (VIPR is a uniformed unit with armor that acts as a "force multiplier" in transportation areas). But yeah, I do think it does good, I just think that it is horribly mismanaged by people more interested in saying that it exists then actually utilizing it. A congressman not too long ago wanted to kill the FAM service because it hardly made any arrests. He completely missed the point - if we are making arrests on the plane, theres a problem on the ground that needs to be addressed. Well, I don't see the TSA going away. The FAMS are trying to split away from the TSA, and the Federal Law Enforcement Association is trying to help with that through lobbying. Really, it should be that way as the TSA sees the FAMS as them being able to say they have a law enforcement arm. They also tend (from what I understand) to take the money away from FAMS and often give it to TSOs, as happened to our individual performance incentive (IPI) raises a year or two ago. It's infuriating how bad the TSA is run. This new admiral that just came in might turn things around, but they would need to do some significant pruning, just like they need to do in the FAMS. quote:Additionally, how do you stand the boredom? I assume on most flights nothing happens that needs a marshal's intervention, but you still have to be alert and aware. That seems like it would just be painfully dull. Watch a lot of movies, read a poo poo ton of books, do homework for another degree, stand up and people watch, talk to flight attendants, work on your own book, just about anything you can manage to keep your mind going. It does get pretty dull, and the last few hours of an international flight can be painful, but you get kinda numb to that and to the point where you are almost meditating just staring off into space listening to music after a while.
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Oct 16, 2015 06:11
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Can you expand on the bad relations between the agency and the air marshalls that you mentioned in the OP?
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Oct 16, 2015 10:18
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In your experience how long is the average career there before they get fed up and leave? How long was the initial training? I'm assuming you go through that school in Georgia before everything else. Once you were flying did you feel the training remained helpful or did it seem to be "check the box"? I would expect with those different backgrounds you'd get more out of informal peer to peer training than you would from anything planned for you. Also I just wanted to say that in my experience it's often pretty easy to identify air marshals on flights. The worst one I've seen, there was a marshal sitting in an aisle seat, the pistol and handcuffs on his belt were sticking out into the aisle for the entire plane to see. I'm assuming he should have been suspended for that.
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Oct 16, 2015 13:30
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What are the other issues that made you want to leave that you mentioned?
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Oct 16, 2015 16:03
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quote:Can you expand on the bad relations between the agency and the air marshalls that you mentioned in the OP? I'll have to come back to this at a later period, but there's a huge "us vs. them" mentality because the people running the flying guys haven't done the job of the flying guys and simply don't understand how difficult and bad the schedules are now. That and they tend to cover up disciplinary actions of supervisors while they chase the smallest FAM infractions ( i.e. 5 minutes late for a briefing). However, the FAMS are considered part of the TSA, so you can understand where there is a spaghetti of regulations that simply don't make sense for us. quote:In your experience how long is the average career there before they get fed up and leave? Since a lot of people are transfers in from other agencies, and a lot of them came around at or after 9/11 with another bolus of people being around 2010-2011, most are around 5-10 years before they retire, with a lot of us junior guys getting out about 2-3 years in. I did 4 and a half. What it comes down to is that it's a great job to retire out of, especially if you don't have kids or they have left home, but it's a horrible job to start a career out of. They really don't provide many opportunities to do much other than fly. The training is very, VERY good, and its about 4 and a half months total. We do not go to Glynco, but a different FLETC. Then it's to our own training center, which the TSA recently took over and is using for....??????. I'm not sure where the second part of training will take place when they next hire again. It was exceptionally helpful because the aircraft environment is so dynamic and different, and you are without backup there. You do get a lot of training from the diverse and varied backgrounds, but the training curriculum was designed very well (with the exception of fighting - the guy that did that was a bit delusional about how you would fight on a plane). All in all, I'd say that about 75% of the training was directly applicable, with the rest being possibly or not applicable at all, but it was very, very good. Yeah I've seen that before too. Most of the time it's not an issue, since we work on concealment all the time - it's really bread and butter. Sometimes though, you have to realize that we are working in an extremely exhausted state, which is one of the biggest arguments we have lately. Sometimes it leads to carelessness, which is really scary when you look at what we have to do, but it's something the agency buries and ignores. Anyways, that is an exception rather than the norm, and if that happens it's advised to simply tell a flight attendant about it, and they will let them know and let you know if thats supposed to be there or not.
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Oct 16, 2015 16:12
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Are most/all people former law enforcement or do like, pilots ever shift into that since they're already in the industry?
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Oct 16, 2015 16:19
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Is there any specific firearms training involved? If so, what does it emphasize? Can you speak a little about the firearms you are issued?
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Oct 16, 2015 16:52
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What's your go-to answer when the old lady next to you says "so, what brings you to Cleveland?". What percentage of flights is there a FAM on? 1 in 10? 1 in 100?
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Oct 16, 2015 16:53
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I didn't realize I'd have so many questions or be so curious about air marshals so thank you for making this thread, by the way. It's always fun when A/T gets me curious about something I haven't thought about.
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Oct 16, 2015 16:55
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photomikey posted:What percentage of flights is there a FAM on? 1 in 10? 1 in 100? He addressed this a couple posts up and it's p much a national secret, for obvious reasons. How did things go in the countries flown to? I would imagine if you are flying out of somewhere like Turkey, you want as few as possible airport personnel knowing who you are and why you are skipping security. Was this an issue, or any other issues with foreign airports? Do you still work for the government?
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Oct 16, 2015 18:40
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Dr.Caligari posted:How did things go in the countries flown to? I would imagine if you are flying out of somewhere like Turkey, you want as few as possible airport personnel knowing who you are and why you are skipping security. Was this an issue, or any other issues with foreign airports?
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Oct 16, 2015 18:50
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quote:Are most/all people former law enforcement or do like, pilots ever shift into that since they're already in the industry? I can say that I only know of one commercial pilot that came over. His background was simply flying, but he got laid off when the airline he flew for went under. He loved flying, but this paid a lot more and he was kind of in a bind at the time. Most seem to have some military or law enforcement background. Realistically, unless you have that or were a serious sports member, we found that a lot of people had trouble completing the training because it is pretty heavily biased towards physical activity. quote:Is there any specific firearms training involved? If so, what does it emphasize? Well, we had to qualify every quarter, but usually shot a little more than that. Not enough - they don't spend enough on ammunition for us. It's called the Practical Pistol Course, and in my opinion it's a bit too easy. It's out of 300 and we needed to score a 255, which is 50 points more than any other agency. Accuracy is king for us considering we don't really have much leeway for missed shots. The firearms instructors are all fantastic, and are flying FAMS themselves that went through a school and then do a stint training. The old system used to be the Tactical Pistol Course, and it was great. They canned it because people weren't able to pass it when coming into the agency, which is a STUPID reason for removing it. It has different exercises like shooting after a turn, shooting from a seat, moving from a seat and shooting, and other different exercises. We use the same gun as the secret service right now - because the secret service ran this organization with retired agents for a while, with a lot of them still holding the top spot. That's one of the reasons the agency seems to be confused about how it wants to move forward in the future. It's a sig p229 chambered in .357 sig, and i absolutely love this gun. It's got a fairly hefty kick and it's loud as hell, but it's going to do the job necessary with minimal firing. A quick wikipedia glance showed that they say we carry the p250 also - that's incorrect. That gun was so broken and hosed that it was sent back soon after we received it do to breakages with trigger springs and slide lock issues. It's the 229 or the slightly more compact 239. We also do a lot of shoot/noshoot discrimination, and a lot of non-lethal fighting. quote:What's your go-to answer when the old lady next to you says "so, what brings you to Cleveland?". Because I worked in computers and still keep up on it, I always answer a security consultant. I have a made up company that came from a role-playing game that I used to play as a kid that I say employs me. It's always entertaining when someone acts like they know that company, or even better when they say they have worked there before. I even had a guy ask if I knew someone there, which made it difficult not to laugh. Other people have interesting stories like sales representatives, artists, or one even had the story they were an individually wealthy inheritor. I can't discuss the percentage of flight coverage, unfortunately. quote:He addressed this a couple posts up and it's p much a national secret, for obvious reasons. It varies from country to country. Each one has different procedures that I cannot speak about, but I will say that Germany and France were the most awesome countries to fly to in the way they treated us. I simply can't say enough for the professional courtesy that their border police and customs show us. On certain days they were even better than our own customs in this country. Some Asian countries proved difficult and long to transit through, but I never really saw any problems since the procedures are used so much. The worst I felt was London, simply because they treated us like we were loving criminals passing through security. Yes, I do. quote:Huh, I didn't even think of this. There must be something to go through customs or whatever. Is there a law-enforcement equivalent of a diplomatic passport? We do, it's a red bound passport that is just an official passport. We use that when we are traveling internationally, but have our normal blue passport with us too. Each airport on the way back has a different process for how we proceed coming back into the US, and each country transiting in there has a procedure specific to that country. They are hashed out with the FAM service and the state department, I believe. There's been a push to get diplomatic passports for FAMS, but that will never happen because the agency is run by people with no desire to make things better for the flying guys.
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Oct 16, 2015 19:22
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How do you feel about the FFDO program?
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Oct 16, 2015 20:11
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What do you think an air marshal is for? What's the purpose of having them?
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Oct 16, 2015 20:35
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quote:How do you feel about the FFDO program? I liked it a lot. The pilots having a gun and the training in their little cockpit area was always a good backup for an absolute worst case scenario. Frankly, a lot of us felt an extra gun in a locked and controlled area of the cockpit is a good thing. It's a pity there are less and less, but the pilots have to pay for EVERYTHING themselves. Their training was pretty good too, and focused towards defending themselves in that little area. quote:What do you think an air marshal is for? What's the purpose of having them? So, the primary purpose is to protect the integrity of the cockpit. Before 9/11, it was to prevent air piracy and the murder of innocents on board - no one had considered an airplane as a weapon, really. Now, what happens onboard is secondary to making sure that the cockpit is never breached, which makes a lot of sense to me. However, as law enforcement officers on board, we can also take care of people that assault others, harass, or otherwise break the law. Likewise, I see air marshals as a force multiplier for transportation areas that have a massive flow of people, like the BART system in San Francisco, or the NYC subways. As the Madrid bombings or even the tokyo subway incidents show, sometimes the police need some assistance in taking care of issues, and if there was an open conflict, we are more trained to deal with "open warfare" for lack of a better term. In the broadest sense, we are combat counterterrorists in an urban setting. On a plane, now you have the "Ben Carson effect" that we had been recently calling it, where someone threatening a hijacking would be mobbed by people aboard. If it was a 9/11 scenario, then that simple mobbing might not work, which is the worst case we are taught to fight through, with or without a gun. In the end, it's the core of an onion, and a deterrent factor. I know that a lot of people aren't too keen on deterrence, but the fact remains that it is a very, very good one. They have found copies of FAM manuals in caves in Afghanistan, and we know that they are trying to find ways to bypass the FAM service or find ways to know when and where FAMS are on flights. Let me put it this way - one of our training scenarios has us more or less hobbled and disabled, and we have to fight our way out of it to pass that part - and I'm not talking simulated, I mean they physically put us in a painful position and then make us fight someone while in that state. I can't go into details, but it sucked. The mystique and the rigorous training that we undergo really puts us in a unique spot where the bad guys know we exist, and often know where we are, but don't know what we are capable of. FAMs have such great training they could be used more in transportation venues, or assisting other agencies like the Marshals or Customs in transport of individuals, but the agency is too scared that FAMs might actually be used. The TSA is scared of it's own shadow, really, and I cannot blame them considering the people that they hire in general. Edit: Just to clarify, our training is great now and it continues pretty much. There are some extremely lazy and out of shape FAMs that don't want to do anything but sit in a seat and collect their per diem. That's an unfortunately consequence of the TSA and their inability to fire people or enforce requirements, and the continual relaxation of standards that they have. However, I would say they are quite a small minority. Jiro Kage fucked around with this message at 22:17 on Oct 16, 2015 |
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Oct 16, 2015 22:14
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This is a cool thread, thanks for posting! I know you can't go into specifics, but are you guys (and women?) trained in something like a United 93 situation, where the passengers might be able to rise up and incapacitate the terrorist or whatever? You mentioned one guy was a retired pilot, what happens if the worst occurs and terrorists disable the flight crew?
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Oct 16, 2015 22:38
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Duckboat posted:This is a cool thread, thanks for posting! There's a lot of different scenarios we are trained in. You can basically look back over history at the crap that has happened on flights and we probably have that scenario or some derivative as a training scenario. With the dynamic changing slightly and the aforementioned perception that people aren't going to stand around while someone tries to detonate their shoe or take over a plane, it gives us a bit more leeway on how or why to act. We might not have to break cover if an attacker is held down and cuffed. I've been on planes before where a fight broke out and we couldn't hear it, but the flight attendants never told us and it was taken care of by them and passengers. Well, I can't really talk about the contingency system, but we are also trained in operation of the autopilot systems in both boeing and airbus aircraft, so we could potentially at least stabilize the aircraft if pilots were injured until we could contact someone to assist. At that point we are in a ridiculous poo poo sandwich anyways, and I'm not sure which direction we would be taking because this is the sort of thing that plays out depending on the circumstances. Likewise, we have some basic medical training, although you are going to be pressed to find a FAM assist with medical emergencies unless it is related to a conflict. I have yet to have a medical emergency on a plane where there wasn't a doctor, nurse, or EMT of some sort on board.
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Oct 16, 2015 22:49
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What fictional depiction of an airplane hijacking aggravates you the most? Is it Airforce one?
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Oct 16, 2015 23:09
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How much of a concern is DVT when you spend that much time flying?
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Oct 16, 2015 23:46
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quote:What fictional depiction of an airplane hijacking aggravates you the most? Is it Airforce one? Probably that latest Liam Neeson one that was supposedly an air marshal movie. It's actually more entertaining about him smoking in the bathroom, drinking on duty, etc. I especially liked the "who are you, this is a secure network!!!!" while they were 30000 feet up. quote:How much of a concern is DVT when you spend that much time flying? That's something they should address but don't. It's like how badly our backs and sleep cycles are messed up, yet they try to ignore it despite people getting injured a lot. With DVT's, it's not so bad since most of us are in pretty good shape, eat decent diets, and also move around a lot during flights. I haven't ever heard of anyone having a clot, although I'm sure there had to be someone.
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Oct 17, 2015 00:54
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This is probably a dumb a question as I'm not a plane guy or a gun guy, but here goes. How much of a risk is there in firing a gun on a plane? Forgetting about accidentally shooting a passenger, I mean is it possible to pierce the fuselage and decompress the aircraft?
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Oct 17, 2015 11:29
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How is the relationship with the airlines? Do they resent your presence? Or are they grateful for it? A bit of both?
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Oct 17, 2015 12:34
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How are routes decided? What determines whether you fly first/business class or economy class? I know many frequent fliers that are really upset at federal air marshalls when they show up on a flight, displacing the upgrade list. Particularly since they are done so at the last minute, and when the first class cabin is booked out, that means someone has to get involuntarily denied boarding. In other cases, they take someone's spot that would have otherwise gotten upgraded.
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Oct 17, 2015 13:16
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quote:This is probably a dumb a question as I'm not a plane guy or a gun guy, but here goes. Actually, the way it was explained to us, there isn't really that much risk. The round isn't likely to penetrate the skin. Even if it did, there isn't the explosive decompression like you see in the movies - air will leak out, but it isn't going to be a torrential gale inside of the plane. The real risk comes in the hearing loss that EVERYONE is going to probably experience after the gun fires in the long, sealed tube. quote:How is the relationship with the airlines? Do they resent your presence? Or are they grateful for it? A bit of both? I can't speak for the upper management, who probably hate the fact that we took a revenue seat, but most of the time, the flight attendants loved us being there, and I never had a pilot that wasn't appreciative for us. There's a partial truth that we do take away from a revenue seat - however, there are some tax incentives given to the airlines for each marshal seat that is given on a flight, or at least that is what we were told. I have never verified it, and I kinda doubt it, but that is what we were told was the reason why the airlines don't lose that much money on us. Nonetheless, it's generally seen as a good thing for us to be there. I've had pursers try to not let us on a flight early, I've seen them literally dump coffee in the lap of a colleague and then say "oh it's just you", and I've had them completely ignore us during the service, which kinda gives us away when you are sitting up in first class. quote:How are routes decided? What determines whether you fly first/business class or economy class? Unfortunately, routes and where we sit when we fly are all in the realm of stuff I can't talk about. Actually, the tickets are usually booked well in advance, especially for the longer international flights. The scheduling system we have allows our operations center to change flights and seats at the last minute, however. Being asked to change seats is a very common occurrence, though, and it's really up to us whether we want to. As long as we are comfortable with it, we can go ahead and do that. I've had people come up to me and bitch at me during the middle of a flight because they wanted the seat I'm in and I somehow displaced them, or because they couldn't sit with their spouse. 99% of the time if the person wasn't a dick, I would switch with them and just make sure it was known I changed seats. As for upgrades, I've surprisingly never had anyone that should have gotten an upgrade complain. I believe that's because we are scheduled in advance and most of the upgrades happen right then and there.
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Oct 17, 2015 15:43
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How are your interactions with the pilots? While I imagine you fly on larger flights and not crappy regional ones, my experience has been that pilots are generally assholes when they're young. My husband used to fly for Continental, and man, some of his co-pilots... He also feels that weapons don't belong in the cockpit, and that having them there is distracting. If you're PIC, you need to be focused on flying and the plane, and nothing else. Thoughts?
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Oct 17, 2015 17:34
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Domus posted:How are your interactions with the pilots? While I imagine you fly on larger flights and not crappy regional ones, my experience has been that pilots are generally assholes when they're young. My husband used to fly for Continental, and man, some of his co-pilots... I never had a bad interaction with pilots. I have heard stories about pilots that have thrown FAMs off of planes, which incurs both them and the airlines a fine (I think - I know the airline gets fined) but I've never actually seen it happen. The pilots always seemed to act like we were just like the crew, to the point of asking us to come up for the crew briefing sometimes when we happened to get there early. Since so many of us are military, also, a lot of the pilots like that fact that we can talk their lingo. I don't see how it's distracting, really. When you have carried a firearm for a while, it tends to become just another extension of something you wear, like a phone on a belt clip. You maintain control and are aware that it's there, but it's not something you consciously think about or are distracted by. If anything, it can simply be uncomfortable at times. I don't think it's much of a distraction, or shouldn't be if you are trained properly, but I'm not a pilot. Hell, with the amount of time it seems like pilots are coming out to piss or shoot the poo poo with the flight attendants, I don't think a firearm is the worst of their problems when it comes to distractions.
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Oct 17, 2015 18:37
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Jiro Kage posted:I have heard stories about pilots that have thrown FAMs off of planes  Unless the FAM got like, drunk or something, which seems in turn like it wouldn't warrant a fine since it'd be more an "incapable of doing their job, also being a drunk rear end in a top hat on a plane" situation and not the airline just randomly throwing someone off.
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Oct 17, 2015 18:43
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Tendai posted:Why would they even do this? Well, I don't really know. Some of them might just not liked the idea of FAMs on planes. Some of them might have had a personality conflict with the team leader. I think the times I have heard it happen was because the pilots felt that it was a bit of their command of the plane being usurped. While technically we are under the control of the PIC, when it comes to something happening on the plane, I can guarantee you that he will be told well after the fact. You know, I did have a pilot tell me once not to do anything, that he would take care of it. I didn't really give it much thought but just told him ok, knowing full well I would ignore what he said if something went south in the back. I guess maybe that was one of those bitter or egotistical guys, but other than that he wasn't that much of a problem. As for the alcohol thing, I want to mention something else. The current director, Allison, has a severe hard on for perceived alcohol issues. While it's true a lot of FAMs do drink, I have never seen it done to excess. I HAVE been on a flight where a partner felt a bit hung over, but never to the point where they smell or are still drunk the next day. Nonetheless, this new director felt the need to outlay a ton of money doing "reasonable suspicion testing", which has roots in the Department of Transportation. Here's where it goes south: this testing means they were supposed to have a reason, such as a person slurring their speech, or smelling like alcohol, or a few other indicators. However, the investigators were directed to pick people randomly when overseas, and they did it in a way that completely exposed FAMS in foreign countries, to the point of asking hotel managers where certain people were, or calling them and trying to identify themselves over the phone and asking them to come to their room. The part that really pissed us off was that as we saw it, there WAS no problem, and this money could have been spent in better ways, like getting us more ammunition to practice or sending us to more training schools. He claimed up and down there was an alcohol problem within the agency, but anecdotal evidence from all the offices didn't really fit with that and they never provided any statistics on what made them think it was a problem. Yeah, he had a video he put out with a few guys that had alcohol issues. We were sure there were a few. But making a program like that so bit and so pervasive and taking away from other essentials for it really rubbed us the wrong way. To the day I left, we still had never received any information about what was the cause for this program to come around, like some statistics on alcohol problems. That's a little bit of a ramble, but it shows one of the reasons the current director isn't that well liked. That and he came from the investigations side, and helped to get the old director thrown out. The old director did something shady with guns but got away with it in a settlement, which is a load of poo poo. Jiro Kage fucked around with this message at 19:37 on Oct 17, 2015 |
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Oct 17, 2015 19:34
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Jiro Kage posted:Well, I don't really know. Some of them might just not liked the idea of FAMs on planes. Some of them might have had a personality conflict with the team leader. I think the times I have heard it happen was because the pilots felt that it was a bit of their command of the plane being usurped. While technically we are under the control of the PIC, when it comes to something happening on the plane, I can guarantee you that he will be told well after the fact. Huh. Interesting. Thank you for your responses!
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Oct 17, 2015 20:29
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Are there many female Air Marshals? Can you tell us some stories of your time as an air Marshall? Dealing with drunk passengers and duct taping them to the seat, assisting with medical emergencies, badly behaved children, defusing the bomb with one second left on the clock, etc
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Oct 18, 2015 02:13
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In addition to all that... what percentage of flights do you actually have to *do* anything? It must be almost never, yes?
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Oct 18, 2015 04:46
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Jiro Kage posted:
This has nothing to do with the OPs questions and answers, but it might help people asking about this. It doesn't happen at the gate for everyone. Upgrades depend on status and availability. As a delta gold status, I am at the poo poo heap of upgrades but it does happen for me at the gate or if something is hosed. If I was diamond it happens earlier, if I was platinum it happens on booking - but all of those are based on availability. And someone paying for first class trumps all status. So, nobody bitches because they know how it works and assumes they were a shithole ft status (me) or that someone was either above them in the upgrade algorithm or just paid for the seat - the last is basically what happens according to OP.
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Oct 18, 2015 04:48
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photomikey posted:In addition to all that... what percentage of flights do you actually have to *do* anything? It must be almost never, yes? I never had to do anything flying. I did have some close calls, but all of these were for drunken fools. Every single time when the flight attendant threatened police at the gate, the person promptly went to sleep. My FTO used to tell me his goal in the job was to never have to get out of his seat for an incident, and I agree.
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Oct 18, 2015 20:19
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Sometimes when I fly when I have a cold or other sinus condition, I think the pressurization and de-pressurization along with the accompanying altitude change helps turn my cold into a sinus infection or makes the congestion worse. Because I fly a lot (a lot compared to most people, not to you), this is constantly on my mind anytime I have the slightest sniffle and I have a flight coming up. Do you do anything to help with this? Other than general physical fitness, do you do anything to prevent illness? Do you believe the hype around recirculated cabin air being bad for you? Did you develop any germaphobic tendencies? If you have a work trip from wherever you're based to somewhere good (Hawaii, Italy, whatever), can you take your vacation while you're in Italy ( a week or whatever), or are you limited to typical turnaround time?
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Oct 18, 2015 23:28
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