Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Paul Nelson, KSL NewsradioThe doors leading into an airplane's cockpit are supposed to be secure and unbreakable, right? Well, a new report says that might not always be the case.
It's hard to speak about airline security without mentioning Sept. 11. Overall, security is much better now than it was then. Passengers at Salt Lake International say security seems to be just fine.
One woman said, "It seems pretty good, yeah. It seems all right."
One man said, "I don't concern myself. I feel like we're probably doing the best [we can] with the resources we have available."
Even though things are better, a new Consumer Reports article shows there are some still some serious concerns with airline security.
Consumer Reports Managing Editor Bob Tiernan said, "Talking to the people who actually do the screening at the airports, the transportation security officers felt that they didn't get as much training as they needed considering the work they have to do."
Tiernan says they've been able to find well-documented lapses in screening procedures, a drop in U.S Marshals protecting passengers, and cases where people have broken through cockpit doors.
"There was another report that we saw in which somebody was able to take one of the beverage carts and ram the door and break through it," he said.
Tiernan says 51 of the cases of broken cockpit doors have been reported since April 2002, and double doors are better at preventing these accidents. However, Transportations Safety Administration officials say that's an extremely small number.
TSA Spokesman Nico Melendez said, "In that same period of time, there have been 81 million flights. I would say 51 incidents reflect a very, very, very, very, very small percentage of and a very rare occurrence."
Melendez says they test themselves tens of thousands of times within a 30-day period, and some of the criticism against the agency is wrong.
"To a degree, we would expect the attention that we get, but we do believe that some of it is unfounded, and some of it is spoken by uneducated voices," he said.
Melendez says airlines will use double doors on cockpits when Congress makes that a law, but that legislation is being debated on Capitol Hill. He also questions the numbers used by Consumer Reports saying there are only 2,200 Air Marshals now, compared to 4,000 before.
