Sign of Times: Thousands Apply to Be Air Marshals

If the Federal Aviation Administration had placed help-wanted ads last month for air marshals to patrol the nation’s jetliners, it might have gotten a handful of responses from applicants willing to tolerate the boredom and the airplane food.

This week it got more than 15,000.

Such has been the effect of the Sept. 11 terrorist hijackings and President Bush’s announced plan to put the armed undercover federal agents at the center of his airline security plan. From police officers to stockbrokers, Americans are expressing their patriotic fervor by seeking to enlist in the war against terrorism.

But though air marshals may be reassuring for passengers, some experts warn that the program may prove costly and impractical for preventing the kinds of sophisticated attacks seen on Sept. 11.

“This won’t really address the issues, but it will make people feel better,” said Douglas Laird, former Northwest Airlines security chief.

Because of the high number of U.S. flights--about 24,000 a day--protecting the skies with air marshals has always been a logistical challenge, Laird said. The infrequency of hijacking attempts also makes it difficult to keep marshals trained and motivated.

“It can be a boring job,” said Laird, adding that it might make more sense to invest the money in better airport screening, such as high-performance X-ray machines.

The FAA won’t say how many air marshals it had in force before Sept. 11 or how many it plans to hire now. Last week, Sen. John D. “Jay” Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) suggested that the number of undercover air marshals trained to monitor flights is as few as 32.

Bush has vowed to dramatically increase that number, but it won’t be cheap. Hiring and training 3,000 new air marshals could cost more than $500 million in the first year, based upon the salaries offered by the FAA.

And that would still leave many flights unprotected. Staffing every U.S. flight with an air marshal could cost billions.

“From a public policy standpoint, it becomes a cost issue,” said Richard Bloom, director of terrorism and intelligence studies at Arizona-based Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. “You have to ask: Is it worth it?”

Though air marshals have proved useful in subduing emotionally disturbed passengers or lone hijackers, they may not be well suited to prevent well-planned attacks, Bloom said.

“I don’t think sky marshals will have much of an impact on the kinds of sophisticated terrorism we saw Sept. 11,” Bloom said. “Terrorists do their own intelligence, and they will figure out ways to get around air marshals.”

A group of several terrorists might be able to overcome a single air marshal. Or hijackers might take steps to incapacitate all passengers.

“Once they are on the plane, if they put their minds to it, they can be very hard to stop,” Bloom said.

But Bush said Thursday that air marshals will serve both to deter future terrorist attacks and to put passengers at ease.

“When Americans fly, there need to be more highly skilled and fully equipped officers of law flying alongside them,” the president said. “These marshals, of course, will wear plainclothes. They’ll be like any other passenger. But Americans will know that there’s more of them. And our crews will know there’s more of them. And the terrorists will know there’s more of them.”

FAA officials say interest in the air marshal jobs, which pay between $35,000 and $80,000 a year, has been unprecedented. More than 150,000 applications have been downloaded from the agency’s Web site since the attack.

Air marshals have been flying since the 1970s, when the government created the program amid a wave of hijackings to and from Cuba.

In 1985, President Reagan expanded the force after the hijacking of TWA Flight 847, in which a U.S. Navy diver was slain.

But over the last decade, the program has waned. In 1997, a Transportation Department review found that air marshal deployments fell 48% from 1992 to 1996. The report also criticized the program for “administrative deficiencies,” excessive back-office staffing and “excess weapons” in inventory.

Air marshals typically work inside the cockpit or in the passenger cabin, where they dress and act like other passengers. What would be the appeal of such a position?

“Hey, it’s a federal job and it’ll probably be around for quite some time,” said Gary Jackson, vice president at Blackwater Training Center, a firearms training facility in North Carolina that has trained air marshals. “But also I think there are a lot of people who want to work to protect their country.”

In addition to being younger than 37 and in top physical shape, air marshals must be deadly accurate with a gun, capable of shooting along a crowded aisle without harming passengers or blowing a hole in the plane, Jackson said.

“They have to be a pretty darn good shot,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve seen a more stringent shooting test than theirs.”

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Times staff writer Ricardo Alonzo-Zaldivar in Washington contributed to this report.