Portugal refuses US request for armed guards on flights

rooboy

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Mon Jan-05-04 05:37 PM
Original message

Portugal refuses US request for armed guards on flights

Portugal's civil aviation authority said it would not allow Portuguese airlines to carry armed sky marshals as requested by the US, preferring instead to cancel any flight if officials deem there is a terrorist threat.

"We will not authorise loaded guns on Portuguese planes, therefore we will not allow armed guards," INAC security director, Joaquim Carvalho, told AFP.

"If there is specific information about a particular flight which justifies having armed guards on board, what we would consider is cancelling the flight."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1020777.htm

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Laughing Mirror

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Mon Jan-05-04 05:49 PM
Response to Original message

1. Thank you Portugal for standing up to these fearmongers

in Washington like your cousins in Brazil have done.

Who will join these courageous countries, unwilling to bend over to the (justifiable) paranoia of the terrorist Bush regime?

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readmylips

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Mon Jan-05-04 06:02 PM
Response to Original message

2. Some of those so called 'guards'

may be real terrorists themselves. How do we know how well other countries train and process sky marshalls? They can give the job to any joeblow just to comply with little man boosh. Boosh is just giving us a false sense of security. Worse, we have made more enemies throughout the world with all these dumb policies.

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arcane1

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Mon Jan-05-04 06:06 PM
Response to Reply #2

3. not only that...

Edited on Mon Jan-05-04 06:06 PM by arcane1

but 5 terrorists on a plane, with no fear of death (indeed, planning to die anyway) can easily overtake an armed guard in the close confines of a plane. Sure, he might get a shot at 1 or 2 of them, but they would have the numbers..

and I don't wanna know what happens to the stray bullet if he misses :scared:

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slackmaster

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Mon Jan-05-04 07:32 PM
Response to Reply #3

5. Numbers may indeed be the key

What chance would 5 terrorists armed with box cutters have against 200 unarmed passengers and crewmembers who are determined to keep the plane in the air or at least thwarting any attempt to crash it into something? If not for the foolish policy of appeasing hijackers the 9/11/01 attacks could not have happened.

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pinto

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Mon Jan-05-04 06:11 PM
Response to Original message

4. BA pilots mentioned other national pilot assoc's would line up against

the armed guard policy....they're real clear they'd rather cancel a flight than have a shoot out at 30,000 feet...makes a lot of sense to me.

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leesa

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Mon Jan-05-04 10:11 PM
Response to Original message

6. Good. Sanity exists somewhere.

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