A morning newscast featuring Breaking News and weather reports. Question that goes to congress and reviving congress again next week. Big question. So, rick, with that said, what vulnerabilities did this highlight, do you think . Not just, is it the airport, the airline . I mean, who are they really going to be looking more closely at here . Well, every airport is different. So, theyre going to have to come up with specific guidelines for each airport. And the problem is, once somebody does this, he puts a lot of people at risk. One guy gets in one airplane and he takes off in a crowded metropolitan area and look what happens. Not only deuz oes it tie up the Traffic System but no one knew what his intentions were. He could have easily turned north and gone through downtown seattle. He could have caused countless deaths on the ground. This is a real vulnerability that they have to address. Its not, they say this is one guy, one plane. But the potential damage he could cause needs to be
addressed. let s go to some of the particulars about thissu situatn now. earlier they referred to him as a mechanic, that s the job title that we were learning in the early moments after the breaking news. we now know that he was a ground service agent. first to you, mary, most people know what a mechanic is. ground service agent, what would that description consisted of and would he typically have access to the cockpit to pull something like this off? no, to have access to the cockpit and taxi an aircraft. normally you re a mechanic and you to have to specific authority and you have to have taxi authority and be trained in the airport and have taxi authority and know the airport traffic patterns because lots of collisions happen right on the ground in the taxiways. i have worked air crashes where planes have crashed into each other while they re being taxied around. a couple years ago a mechanic taxied one off accidentally off
uncontrolled airport. overall, greg, as you look at the prospect of closing these control towers, does it worry you about safety? absolutely, alex, any time that you lose that tool of the air traffic controller being able to monitor the airplanes coming in and out of that airport or all aircraft, that level of safety diminishes only because you have a service that s provided to pilots to make them more aware of other airplanes and helicopters in the local vicinity. you take that tool away and now you put that onus solely on the pilot and then you see air traffic collisions and they happen in and around airport traffic patterns. i have been reading about small airplanes and helicopters, they have some blind spots, if you will. so is this what you re mostly concerned about here? i m concerned not only in flight, but on the ground