Flight attendants demand security training
The biggest U.S. flight attendant unions, representing more than 70,000 workers at big airlines, pressed the Bush administration Wednesday to develop mandatory security training for them, saying their appeals had been ignored. Flight attendants complain that pilots — some of them armed — are locked away behind reinforced cockpit doors while cabin crews remain largely unprepared in self-defense and other security skills to handle a serious threat to the aircraft nearly three years after the September 11, 2001, attacks. “It should not take another act of terrorism on board an aircraft to convince the airlines and the (Transportation Security Administration) to do their job and give us the training we need to do ours,” said Patricia Friend, president of the Association of Flight Attendants. Full Story