Contents:

• Flight crews will get training in self-defense
• Mineta to outline baggage security guidelines
• Delays expected with baggage screening rules
• Delta-attendants struggle carries high stakes
• FAA issues final rule for reinforcing cockpit doors

Along with learning how to secure oxygen masks and evacuate a plane, flight attendants could soon be practicing wrist locks, pressure-point tactics and other means of restraining terrorists.

Onboard kits for flight attendants and pilots, which already contain plastic handcuffs, may eventually hold a supply of pepper spray-saturated towelettes, stab-proof vests and cut-resistant gloves.

The Aviation and Transportation Security Act, signed into law by President Bush on Nov.  19, mandates that the Federal Aviation Administration develop new training guidelines by Friday for pilots and flight attendants to deal with security threats, and requires airlines to develop new training programs by mid-March.

The FAA will then have one month to approve or veto the programs, and then the airlines will have six months to implement them, said FAA

Read More... http://www.miami.com/herald/content/business/digdocs/041248.htm

2002 The Miami Herald

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- New guidelines have been issued to airlines on how to meet Friday's congressional mandate that all checked bags be screened for explosives, a Department of Transportation spokesman confirmed Tuesday.

Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta is expected to outline the guidelines in a speech Wednesday to the Transportation Research Board.

Mineta is expected to tell airlines they must establish a "multi-layered system of security" that varies from airport to airport and uses security tools. The tools includes the expanded use of a computer-assisted passenger profiling system; manual bag searches; bomb-sniffing dogs; trace detection; and various types of X-ray systems.

Read More... http://www.cnn.com/2002/TRAVEL/NEWS/01/15/rec.aviation.security/index.html

2002 Cable News Network LP, LLLP.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- With airlines facing a federally mandated deadline this week to begin screening all checked baggage, one U.S. senator warned Sunday that doing so will mean longer delays at airports.

Airlines will have to "work through" the new screening process, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, told CNN's Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer.  "All of this is going to be time-consuming," she said. "But I hope people will be patient and understand that we are trying to screen in some way every bag that goes on an airplane."

The Aviation Security Act, passed by Congress in response to the September 11 attacks, requires that all checked baggage be screened beginning Friday.

Much of the work will have to be done by hand because airlines don't have enough explosives-detecting machines.

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http://www.cnn.com/2002/TRAVEL/NEWS/01/14/airlines.baggage/index.html

2002 Cable News Network LP, LLLP.

As much as they may disagree about who should win, officials from Delta Air Lines and the Association of Flight Attendants agree on one thing the union-organizing election that ends this month is a very big deal for both sides.

For Delta, rebuffing the union would keep the nation's third-largest carrier 87 percent union-free and company officials say it would allow the company to keep costs 5-7 percent lower than if they had more unions.

"We also feel it would enable us to keep our flexibility, that you lose when you get into having a union," said Delta spokesman John Kennedy.

For the union it would mean a win in one of the largest organizing drives in history, by sheer numbers of potential new members.  It also would raise the stature of flight attendants everywhere, union organizers say.

"It would definitely be a consolidation of economic and political power," said AFA president Pat Friend, whose union has nearly 50,000 members, including flight attendants at United, US Airways and AirTran.  "This would strengthen our hand and voice in not only Washington but at every bargaining table."

"It would also force the company to put into writing all of these great things that they say they're doing for us," said Paula Breeze of Pierce Township, a 25-year veteran flight attendant stationed at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport Delta's second-largest hub.

Since the election officially began on Dec.7, union officials have been recruiting voters (an unmailed ballot counts as a 'no' vote) through phone calls, letters and tables stationed in attendant lounges.

Delta has countered with newsletters, anti-union videos sent to employees' homes and supervisors wearing buttons saying "Rip it up," in the hopes that some attendants will take their advice and destroy the ballot, thereby voting no.

Ballots were mailed to the airline's approximately 20,000 flight attendants.  To count, they must be received by Jan. 30.

The National Mediation Board, which oversees labor relations in the railroad and airline industries, will count the ballots on Feb. 1, and if more than half mailed ballots, the union wins.

Read More...http://enquirer.com/editions/2002/01/13/fin_delta-attendants.html

Copyright 1995-2002. The Cincinnati Enquirer, a Gannett Co. Inc. newspaper.

ATW - The Website of Airline Management Wednesday, January 16, 2002
Dateline: Monday January 14, 2002

FAA has issued a final rule establishing standards for reinforcing cockpit doors and requiring operators to install the modifications by April 9, 2003.

The agency also issued a Special Federal Aviation Regulation requiring operators to install temporary internal locking devices within 45 days on all aircraft that have cockpit doors, including freighters.

The Air Line Pilots Assn., which represents about 66,000 pilots in North America, said it supports the rule.  "The retrofit of all those airplanes is a major undertaking--but a necessary one, given the new terrorist threat," ALPA President Duane Woerth said in a statement. The final rule and SFAR are available at www.faa.gov/avr/arm/nprm.htm.

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2001 ATW 2001 Penton Media, Inc.