A No-Fly Zone for Knives

Today, AFA-CWA Vice President Sara Nelson has a must-read op-ed in The New York Times. She writes why Flight Attendants, air marshals, airline executives, pilots and rank-and-file officials from the Transportation Security Administration oppose a new policy allowing passengers to carry knives with blades of up to 2.36 inches, beginning next month:

It didn't take Sept. 11 to convince us in the industry that knives of all sizes should be banned. In 2000, an Alaska Airlines passenger, later found to be suffering from a rare reaction to encephalitis and in possession of a 2.36-inch knife, flew into a rage and attacked Flight Attendants, breached the cockpit door and attempted to destroy the aircraft before being tackled by passengers and crew.

While cockpit doors are now reinforced and virtually impossible to breach, mayhem in the cabin caused by an out-of-control passenger with a knife would still ensue. My fellow Flight Attendants and I face potentially violent passengers every day, passengers who are angry, depressed, intoxicated or frightened while we're cruising in an aluminum tube miles above the ground.

Just last month, as a Delta Air Lines flight from Minneapolis to Atlanta began its final descent, a 2-year-old boy sitting on his mother's lap started crying because of the change in cabin pressure. As the boy's mother tried to soothe him, the man sitting next to them reportedly used a racial slur and told the mother to "shut up" her son, then turned and slapped the toddler with an open hand. The man was arrested upon landing and charged with assault.

It is our job to address such passengers, de-escalate the situation and, when necessary, enlist other passengers to help contain the problem. The scenarios are already overwhelming: what if we have multiple unruly passengers? What if they are working in concert? What if a passenger trying to help gets hurt and instinctively retaliates?

These are not hypothetical situations; they have all happened in the past, and experience tells us we will face them again sooner or later. Allowing a 2.36-inch knife into these scenarios makes us less safe.

And there is something cynical in the T.S.A.'s position that knives will not "result in the catastrophic failure of an aircraft." Does that mean that anything less — the death or serious injury of a Flight Attendant or a passenger, for example — is acceptable?

Read the full op-ed here.

And sign our petition asking the White House to block the TSA's move to allow knives in aircraft cabins at www.noknivesonplanes.com.