The fight against full-body scanners at airports

'We don't need to look at naked 8-year-olds and grandmothers to secure airplanes,' a lawmaker says. The TSA is adding machines to screen more passengers, much to the chagrin of privacy advocates.


A full-body scanner at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, which has 15 machines and 60 on order. (David Hecker / AFP/Getty Images / January 12, 2010)

Reporting from Washington - The government has promised more and better security at airports following the near-disaster on Christmas Day, but privacy advocates are not prepared to accept the use of full-body scanners as the routine screening system.

"We don't need to look at naked 8-year-olds and grandmothers to secure airplanes," Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said last week. "I think it's a false argument to say we have to give up all of our personal privacy in order to have security."

After each major terrorism incident, the balance between privacy and security tilts in favor of greater security. But in the last decade, privacy advocates have been surprisingly successful in blocking or stalling government plans to search in more ways and in more places.

A conservative freshman in the House, Chaffetz won a large bipartisan majority last year for an amendment to oppose the government's use of body-image scanners as the primary screening system for air travelers. He was joined by the American Civil Liberties Union, which said the scanners were the equivalent of a "virtual strip search."

The pro-privacy stand does not follow the traditional ideological lines; Republicans and Democrats have joined together on the issue now and in the past.

Advocates of increased security are frustrated.

"Privacy and attacks on profiling have been the big hurdles" to developing a better security system for air travelers, said Stewart Baker, who was a top official in the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush.

Since 2001, privacy advocates have twice blocked moves to collect more personal data on passengers and to compile it in a computerized government system. Critics said mass databases would give the government too much information about ordinary Americans. And they said too many innocent people showed up on the watch lists.

At the same time, privacy concerns slowed the move to put more body-imaging scanners in airports. Currently, 19 airports have at least one scanner in use. Now, however, the specter of a man authorities say is a young Al Qaeda convert walking onto a transatlantic flight with a plastic explosive in his underwear has spurred the drive to put the full-body scanners in all the major airports.

The Transportation Security Administration had already announced plans to buy 300 devices, and is likely to purchase more.

The Senate did not adopt the Chaffetz amendment, so the TSA is free to press ahead with installing the body scanners.

"They significantly enhance security because they can detect metallic and nonmetallic items hidden under clothing," said Greg Soule, a TSA spokesman. "And on average, it takes 12 to 15 seconds."

He also suggested that privacy concerns were exaggerated. "It is 100% optional for all passengers," he said. "They can choose to be screened with a full-body pat-down."

Moreover, the screener who observes the passenger's body image is "in a remote location" and cannot see the individual's face, he said. And the body image itself "looks like a chalk etching of a passenger."

Chaffetz disputes that point. He said the body scanners give an explicit view of a naked person. "It is a whole-body image, and they can spin it 360 degrees. And they can zoom in and see something as small as a nickel or dime," he said. "But they can't spot something hidden in a body cavity. A good old-fashioned sniffing dog is more effective."

ACLU lawyers said air travelers should not have to face the prospect of exposing potentially embarrassing medical details, such as colostomy bags or mastectomy scars or their use of adult diapers.

"We continue to think the American people are being sold a bill of goods with these body scanners. Giving the government the authority to scrutinize your body is a tremendous invasion of privacy, and the benefits are questionable," said Jay Stanley, a privacy expert in the ACLU's Washington office.

If the scanners become standard, "the terrorists will adapt to it," he added. "What will we do the next time if someone inserts an explosive in a body cavity and takes it out in the bathroom of the airplane? At some point, we need to draw the line on how much privacy we are willing to give up."

Despite their disagreements, the defenders of privacy and advocates of increased security agree that a better use of information should permit the government to focus its screening on the individuals who pose a threat.

"We clearly need to move faster to a point where we're looking for terrorists, not just weapons," said Baker, a Washington lawyer and formerly general counsel to the National Security Agency. "And the key to that is having more data and using it with more discretion in screening passengers. The current system condemns children and grandmothers to intrusive screening without any assurance it will catch sophisticated terrorists."

He blames Congress, business travelers and privacy advocates for stalling computerized data systems that could alert airport officials to passengers who pose some risk, so they could be given additional screening. Because of past rebuffs in Congress, the Department of Homeland Security "has been quite gun-shy about programs that could be called profiling or data-mining," he said.

Shortly after the Christmas Day incident, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) called for making it easier to add travelers to a government watch list so they will get extra screening or be denied the right to fly.

President Obama and his top aides also said the government needed to focus more on "high-priority threats" and add names quickly to the no-fly list.

Chaffetz said he strongly supported extra screening -- including the use of a full-body scanner -- if a passenger's name appeared on any of the government watch lists.

"I favor secondary screening for all 550,000 persons in the government database. They should be required to go through a mandatory secondary screening," he said. "If there is some basis for doing a secondary screening, do it. But don't do it for every person. You don't have to screen the grandmother from Boise."

Al Qaeda linked to rogue aviation network

TIMBUKTU, Mali (Reuters) - In early 2008, an official at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security sent a report to his superiors detailing what he called "the most significant development in the criminal exploitation of aircraft since 9/11."

The document warned that a growing fleet of rogue jet aircraft was regularly crisscrossing the Atlantic Ocean. On one end of the air route, it said, are cocaine-producing areas in the Andes controlled by the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. On the other are some of West Africa's most unstable countries.

The report, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters, was ignored, and the problem has since escalated into what security officials in several countries describe as a global security threat.

The clandestine fleet has grown to include twin-engine turboprops, executive jets and retired Boeing 727s that are flying multi-ton loads of cocaine and possibly weapons to an area in Africa where factions of al Qaeda are believed to be facilitating the smuggling of drugs to Europe, the officials say.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has been held responsible for car and suicide bombings in Algeria and Mauritania.

Gunmen and bandits with links to AQIM have also stepped up kidnappings of Europeans for ransom, who are then passed on to AQIM factions seeking ransom payments.

The aircraft hopscotch across South American countries, picking up tons of cocaine and jet fuel, officials say. They then soar across the Atlantic to West Africa and the Sahel, where the drugs are funneled across the Sahara Desert and into Europe.

An examination of documents and interviews with officials in the United States and three West African nations suggest that at least 10 aircraft have been discovered using this air route since 2006. Officials warn that many of these aircraft were detected purely by chance. They caution that the real number involved in the networks is likely considerably higher.

Alexandre Schmidt, regional representative for West and Central Africa for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, cautioned in Dakar this week that the aviation network has expanded in the past 12 months and now likely includes several Boeing 727 aircraft.

"When you have this high capacity for transporting drugs into West Africa, this means that you have the capacity to transport as well other goods, so it is definitely a threat to security anywhere in the world," said Schmidt.

The "other goods" officials are most worried about are weapons that militant organizations can smuggle on the jet aircraft. A Boeing 727 can handle up to 10 tons of cargo.

The U.S. official who wrote the report for the Department of Homeland Security said the al Qaeda connection was unclear at the time.

The official is a counter-narcotics aviation expert who asked to remain anonymous as he is not authorized to speak on the record. He said he was dismayed by the lack of attention to the matter since he wrote the report.

"You've got an established terrorist connection on this side of the Atlantic. Now on the Africa side you have the al Qaeda connection and it's extremely disturbing and a little bit mystifying that it's not one of the top priorities of the government," he said.

Since the September 11 attacks, the security system for passenger air traffic has been ratcheted up in the United States and throughout much of the rest of the world, with the latest measures imposed just weeks ago after a failed bomb attempt on a Detroit-bound plane on December 25.

"The bad guys have responded with their own aviation network that is out there everyday flying loads and moving contraband," said the official, "and the government seems to be oblivious to it."

The upshot, he said, is that militant organizations -- including groups like the FARC and al Qaeda -- have the "power to move people and material and contraband anywhere around the world with a couple of fuel stops."

The lucrative drug trade is already having a deleterious impact on West African nations. Local authorities told Reuters they are increasingly outgunned and unable to stop the smugglers.

And significantly, many experts say, the drug trafficking is bringing in huge revenues to groups that say they are part of al Qaeda. It's swelling not just their coffers but also their ranks, they say, as drug money is becoming an effective recruiting tool in some of the world's most desperately poor regions.

U.S. President Barack Obama has chided his intelligence officials for not pooling information "to connect those dots" to prevent threats from being realized. But these dots, scattered across two continents like flaring traces on a radar screen, remain largely unconnected and the fleets themselves are still flying.

THE AFRICAN CONNECTION

The deadly cocaine trade always follows the money, and its cash-flush traffickers seek out the routes that are the mostly lightly policed.

Beset by corruption and poverty, weak countries across West Africa have become staging platforms for transporting between 30 tons and 100 tons of cocaine each year that ends up in Europe, according to U.N. estimates.

Drug trafficking, though on a much smaller scale, has existed here and elsewhere on the continent since at least the late 1990s, according to local authorities and U.S. enforcement officials.

Earlier this decade, sea interdictions were stepped up. So smugglers developed an air fleet that is able to transport tons of cocaine from the Andes to African nations that include Mauritania, Mali, Sierra Leone and Guinea Bissau.What these countries have in common are numerous disused landing strips and makeshift runways -- most without radar or police presence. Guinea Bissau has no aviation radar at all. As fleets grew, so, too, did the drug trade.

The DEA says all aircraft seized in West Africa had departed Venezuela. That nation's location on the Caribbean and Atlantic seaboard of South America makes it an ideal takeoff place for drug flights bound for Africa, they say.

A number of aircraft have been retrofitted with additional fuel tanks to allow in-flight refueling -- a technique innovated by Mexico's drug smugglers. (Cartel pilots there have been known to stretch an aircraft's flight range by putting a water mattress filled with aviation fuel in the cabin, then stacking cargoes of marijuana bundles on top to act as an improvised fuel pump.)

Ploys used by the cartel aviators to mask the flights include fraudulent pilot certificates, false registration documents and altered tail numbers to steer clear of law enforcement lookout lists, investigators say. Some aircraft have also been found without air-worthiness certificates or log books. When smugglers are forced to abandon them, they torch them to destroy forensic and other evidence like serial numbers.

The evidence suggests that some Africa-bound cocaine jets also file a regional flight plan to avoid arousing suspicion from investigators. They then subsequently change them at the last minute, confident that their switch will go undetected.

One Gulfstream II jet, waiting with its engines running to take on 2.3 tons of cocaine at Margarita Island in Venezuela, requested a last-minute flight plan change to war-ravaged Sierra Leone in West Africa. It was nabbed moments later by Venezuelan troops, the report seen by Reuters showed.

Once airborne, the planes soar to altitudes used by commercial jets. They have little fear of interdiction as there is no long-range radar coverage over the Atlantic. Current detection efforts by U.S. authorities, using fixed radar and P3 aircraft, are limited to traditional Caribbean and north Atlantic air and marine transit corridors.

The aircraft land at airports, disused runways or improvised air strips in Africa. One bearing a false Red Cross emblem touched down without authorization onto an unlit strip at Lungi International Airport in Sierra Leone in 2008, according to a U.N. report.

Late last year a Boeing 727 landed on an improvised runway using the hard-packed sand of a Tuareg camel caravan route in Mali, where local officials said smugglers offloaded between 2 and 10 tons of cocaine before dousing the jet with fuel and burning it after it failed to take off again.

For years, traffickers in Mexico have bribed officials to allow them to land and offload cocaine flights at commercial airports. That's now happening in Africa as well. In July 2008, troops in coup-prone Guinea Bissau secured Bissau international airport to allow an unscheduled cocaine flight to land, according to Edmundo Mendes, a director with the Judicial Police.

"When we got there, the soldiers were protecting the aircraft," said Mendes, who tried to nab the Gulfstream II jet packed with an estimated $50 million in cocaine but was blocked by the military.

"The soldiers verbally threatened us," he said. The cocaine was never recovered. Just last week, Reuters photographed two aircraft at Osvaldo Vieira International Airport in Guinea Bissau -- one had been dispatched by traffickers from Senegal to try to repair the other, a Gulfstream II jet, after it developed mechanical problems. Police seized the second aircraft.

FLYING BLIND

One of the clearest indications of how much this aviation network has advanced was the discovery, on November 2, of the burned out fuselage of an aging Boeing 727. Local authorities found it resting on its side in rolling sands in Mali. In several ways, the use of such an aircraft marks a significant advance for smugglers.

Boeing jetliners, like the one discovered in Mali, can fly a cargo of several tons into remote areas. They also require a three-man crew -- a pilot, co pilot and flight engineer, primarily to manage the complex fuel system dating from an era before automation.

Hundreds of miles to the west, in the sultry, former Portuguese colony of Guinea Bissau, national Interpol director Calvario Ahukharie said several abandoned airfields, including strips used at one time by the Portuguese military, had recently been restored by "drug mafias" for illicit flights.

"In the past, the planes coming from Latin America usually landed at Bissau airport," Ahukharie said as a generator churned the feeble air-conditioning in his office during one of the city's frequent blackouts.

"But now they land at airports in southern and eastern Bissau where the judicial police have no presence."

Ahukharie said drug flights are landing at Cacine, in eastern Bissau, and Bubaque in the Bijagos Archipelago, a chain of more than 80 islands off the Atlantic coast. Interpol said it hears about the flights from locals, although they have been unable to seize aircraft, citing a lack of resources.

The drug trade, by both air and sea, has already had a devastating impact on Guinea Bissau. A dispute over trafficking has been linked to the assassination of the military chief of staff, General Batista Tagme Na Wai in 2009. Hours later, the country's president, Joao Bernardo Vieira, was hacked to death by machete in his home.

Asked how serious the issue of air trafficking remained for Guinea Bissau, Ahukharie was unambiguous: "The problem is grave."

The situation is potentially worse in the Sahel-Sahara, where cocaine is arriving by the ton. There it is fed into well-established overland trafficking routes across the Sahara where government influence is limited and where factions of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb have become increasingly active.

The group, previously known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, is raising millions of dollars from the kidnap of Europeans.

Analysts say militants strike deals of convenience with Tuareg rebels and smugglers of arms, cigarettes and drugs. According to a growing pattern of evidence, the group may now be deriving hefty revenues from facilitating the smuggling of FARC-made cocaine to the shores of Europe.

UNHOLY ALLIANCE

In December, Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, told a special session of the UN Security Council that drugs were being traded by "terrorists and anti-government forces" to fund their operations from the Andes, to Asia and the African Sahel.

"In the past, trade across the Sahara was by caravans," he said. "Today it is larger in size, faster at delivery and more high-tech, as evidenced by the debris of a Boeing 727 found on November 2nd in the Gao region of Mali -- an area affected by insurgency and terrorism."

Just days later, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration officials arrested three West African men following a sting operation in Ghana. The men, all from Mali, were extradited to New York on December 16 on drug trafficking and terrorism charges.

Oumar Issa, Harouna Toure, and Idriss Abelrahman are accused of plotting to transport cocaine across Africa with the intent to support al Qaeda, its local affiliate AQIM and the FARC. The charges provided evidence of what the DEA's top official in Colombia described to a Reuters reporter as "an unholy alliance between South American narco-terrorists and Islamic extremists."

Some experts are skeptical, however, that the men are any more than criminals. They questioned whether the drug dealers oversold their al Qaeda connections to get their hands on the cocaine.

In its criminal complaint, the DEA said Toure had led an armed group affiliated to al Qaeda that could move the cocaine from Ghana through North Africa to Spain for a fee of $2,000 per kilo for transportation and protection.

Toure discussed two different overland routes with an undercover informant. One was through Algeria and Morocco; the other via Algeria to Libya. He told the informer that the group had worked with al Qaeda to transport between one and two tons of hashish to Tunisia, as well as smuggle Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi migrants into Spain.

In any event, AQIM has been gaining in notoriety. Security analysts warn that cash stemming from the trans-Saharan coke trade could transform the organization -- a small, agile group whose southern-Sahel wing is estimated to number between 100 and 200 men -- into a more potent threat in the region that stretches from Mauritania to Niger. It is an area with huge foreign investments in oil, mining and a possible trans-Sahara gas pipeline.

"These groups are going to have a lot more money than they've had before, and I think you are going to see them with much more sophisticated weapons," said Douglas Farah, a senior fellow at the International Assessment Strategy Center, a Washington based security think-tank.

NARCOTIC INDUSTRIAL DEPOT

The Timbuktu region covers more than a third of northern Mali, where the parched, scrubby Sahel shades into the endless, rolling dunes of the Sahara Desert. It is an area several times the size of Switzerland, much of it beyond state control.

Moulaye Haidara, the customs official, said the sharp influx of cocaine by air has transformed the area into an "industrial depot" for cocaine.

Sitting in a cool, dark, mud-brick office building in the city where nomadic Tuareg mingle with Arabs and African Songhay, Fulani and Mande peoples, Haidara expresses alarm at the challenge local law enforcement faces.

Using profits from the trade, the smugglers have already bought "automatic weapons, and they are very determined," Haidara said. He added that they "call themselves Al Qaeda," though he believes the group had nothing to do with religion, but used it as "an ideological base."

Local authorities say four-wheel-drive Toyota SUVs outfitted with GPS navigation equipment and satellite telephones are standard issue for smugglers. Residents say traffickers deflate the tires to gain better traction on the loose Saharan sands, and can travel at speeds of up to 70 miles-per-hour in convoys along routes to North Africa.

Timbuktu governor, Colonel Mamadou Mangara, said he believes traffickers have air-conditioned tents that enable them to operate in areas of the Sahara where summer temperatures are so fierce that they "scorch your shoes." He added that the army lacked such equipment. A growing number of people in the impoverished region, where transport by donkey cart and camel are still common, are being drawn to the trade. They can earn 4 to 5 million CFA Francs (roughly $9-11,000) on just one coke run.

"Smuggling can be attractive to people here who can make only $100 or $200 a month," said Mohamed Ag Hamalek, a Tuareg tourist guide in Timbuktu, whose family until recently earned their keep hauling rock salt by camel train, using the stars to navigate the Sahara.

Haidara described northern Mali as a no-go area for the customs service. "There is now a red line across northern Mali, nobody can go there," he said, sketching a map of the country on a scrap of paper with a ballpoint pen. "If you go there with feeble means ... you don't come back."

TWO-WAY TRADE

Speaking in Dakar this week, Schmidt, the U.N. official, said that growing clandestine air traffic required urgent action on the part of the international community.

"This should be the highest concern for governments ... For West African countries, for West European countries, for Russia and the U.S., this should be very high on the agenda," he said.

Stopping the trade, as the traffickers are undoubtedly aware, is a huge challenge -- diplomatically, structurally and economically.

Venezuela, the takeoff or refueling point for aircraft making the trip, has a confrontational relationship with Colombia, where President Alvaro Uribe has focused on crushing the FARC's 45-year-old insurgency. The nation's leftist leader, Hugo Chavez, won't allow in the DEA to work in the country.

In a measure of his hostility to Washington, he scrambled two F16 fighter jets last week to intercept an American P3 aircraft -- a plane used to seek out and track drug traffickers -- which he said had twice violated Venezuelan airspace. He says the United States and Colombia are using anti-drug operations as a cover for a planned invasion of his oil-rich country. Washington and Bogota dismiss the allegation.

In terms of curbing trafficking, the DEA has by far the largest overseas presence of any U.S. federal law enforcement, with 83 offices in 62 countries. But it is spread thin in Africa where it has just four offices -- in Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt and South Africa -- though there are plans to open a fifth office in Kenya.

Law enforcement agencies from Europe as well as Interpol are also at work to curb the trade. But locally, officials are quick to point out that Africa is losing the war on drugs.

The most glaring problem, as Mali's example shows, is a lack of resources. The only arrests made in connection with the Boeing came days after it was found in the desert -- and those incarcerated turned out to be desert nomads cannibalizing the plane's aluminum skin, probably to make cooking pots. They were soon released.

Police in Guinea Bissau, meanwhile, told Reuters they have few guns, no money for gas for vehicles given by donor governments and no high security prison to hold criminals.

Corruption is also a problem. The army has freed several traffickers charged or detained by authorities seeking to tackle the problem, police and rights groups said.

Serious questions remain about why Malian authorities took so long to report the Boeing's discovery to the international law enforcement community.

What is particularly worrying to U.S. interests is that the networks of aircraft are not just flying one way -- hauling coke to Africa from Latin America -- but are also flying back to the Americas.

The internal Department of Homeland Security memorandum reviewed by Reuters cited one instance in which an aircraft from Africa landed in Mexico with passengers and unexamined cargo.

The Gulfstream II jet arrived in Cancun, by way of Margarita Island, Venezuela, en route from Africa. The aircraft, which was on an aviation watch list, carried just two passengers. One was a U.S. national with no luggage, the other a citizen of the Republic of Congo with a diplomatic passport and a briefcase, which was not searched.

"The obvious huge concern is that you have a transportation system that is capable of transporting tons of cocaine from west to east," said the aviation specialist who wrote the Homeland Security report.

"But it's reckless to assume that nothing is coming back, and when there's terrorist organizations on either side of this pipeline, it should be a high priority to find out what is coming back on those airplanes."

Chinooks ready after eight-year delay

Two of eight Chinook Mk 3 helicopters bound for Afghanistan were unveiled

The first of the Chinook Mk 3 helicopters bound for Afghanistan have arrived at a military base in Hampshire after an eight-year delay.

The two helicopters - refitted by Boeing at Boscombe Down, Wiltshire - were unveiled at RAF Odiham.

The Chinooks, bought in 1995 for £259m, could not be used because they did not meet airworthiness regulations.

Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth said they would give an uplift in capability to support "coalition efforts".

Mr Ainsworth added: "I am delighted that the first of the Mk 3s are now joining the Chinook fleet.

"By the end of this year we expect to have all eight of these refitted aircraft in service, increasing our Chinook fleet to 46 aircraft."

Software problem

At the end of last year, he revealed the government planned to purchase 22 more Chinooks.

The Commander of Joint Helicopter Command, Rear Adm Tony Johnstone-Burt said: "These aircraft will be vital in helping us expand our ability to train our crews and to support operations.

"They really will make a difference."

When the helicopters were delivered by Boeing (which had met its contractual obligations) to the MoD in December 2001, it was discovered that the avionics' software was unable to meet UK regulations.

The entire cockpit had to be refitted to meet British requirements.

In 2004, the Committee of Public Accounts described the original purchase of the Chinooks as "one of the worst examples of equipment procurement" that it had seen.

The refitted helicopters, which are considered vital to operations in Helmand, also have extended-range fuel tanks and more powerful engines - enabling them to lift heavier weights.

The government has come under heavy pressure in recent months over the number of heavy-lift helicopters in Helmand.

Conservative leader David Cameron has previously called the shortage "a scandal".

SC agrees to borrow money for Boeing plant

A South Carolina board took just three minutes to give final approval to borrowing $270 million to help build a Boeing Inc. aircraft assembly line in a coastal city.

COLUMBIA, S.C. —

A South Carolina board took just three minutes to give final approval to borrowing $270 million to help build a Boeing Inc. aircraft assembly line in a coastal city.

There was no debate when the five-member Budget and Control Board met Wednesday morning to consider the package. Gov. Mark Sanford and other board members praised the company's decision to create 3,800 jobs at the plant in North Charleston.

Borrowing the money will cost taxpayers $23 million initially and it's expected to take at least five years for the state to cover the full cost.

The package also includes a $102 million short-term loan to the state Commerce Department so work can begin right away.

Southwest Airlines’ Pilots Volunteer to Share the Spirit of Learning to Thousands of Students across the United States.

DALLAS (PRNewswire via COMTEX): What do you want to be when you grow up? Perhaps Pilot is one of the answers. For many students across the country that might be closer than they dream. Southwest Airlines today announces the official takeoff of its award winning, Educational and Mentoring program, Adopt-A-Pilot(R)!

From January through May, fifth-grade students in more than 1,200 classes across the country will “adopt” Southwest Airlines Pilots through a program that leads students through science, geography, math, writing, and other core subjects, all based in aviation-related activities. Students also will research careers, develop life values, and realize the importance of staying in school.

“Our pledge to our communities extends farther than our service at the airport, it’s the total involvement of our Employees to empower the participants to learn and understand they can be all they want to be in life through education,” said Linda Rutherford, Southwest’s Vice President of Communications and Strategic Outreach.

Nearly 800 Southwest Pilots are volunteering in this year’s Adopt-A-Pilot(R) program. During the four-week long curriculum, Pilots volunteer their time in participating classrooms and correspond from the “road” via e-mail and postcards. Classrooms chart the Pilot’s course on an official United States route map and complete lessons related to the Pilot’s monthly flying schedule. To learn more about the program visit or our blog.

“We are proud to have so many of our Pilots committed to sharing their knowledge and experiences with tens of thousands of participants nationwide through the Southwest Airlines Adopt-A-Pilot program,” added Chuck Magill, Southwest’s Vice President of Flight Operations.

Beyond the program’s core mentorship and curriculum-based activities, Adopt-A-Pilot includes many other innovative learning opportunities.

Created in 1997, Adopt-A-Pilot(R) started as a small community outreach program in just 50 classrooms in Southwest’s destination cities, to reach more than 1,200 classrooms in large and small-town communities nationwide. Southwest Airlines developed the program in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Education and the Smithsonian Institution of National Air and Space Museum. National leaders such as Gen. Colin Powell, President Bill Clinton, and First Lady Laura Bush have recognized the excellence that the Adopt-A-Pilot program offers students.

Southwest Airlines (NYSE:), the nation’s largest carrier in terms of domestic passengers enplaned, currently serves 68 cities in 35 states. Based in Dallas, Southwest currently operates more than 3,200 flights a day and has nearly than 35,000 Employees.

About Southwest Airlines:

Southwest Airlines’ Share the Spirit program embodies the culture of positive impact in the communities it serves – demonstrated through Southwest’s charitable giving, Employee volunteerism, and community relations programs. Southwest Airlines is one of the most honored airlines in the world, consistently appearing on the FORTUNE Magazine’s “Most Admired Companies” list. After 38 years of service, Southwest Airlines, the nation’s leading low-fare carrier, continues to stand above other airlines – offering a reliable product with exemplary Customer Service. Southwest Airlines (NYSE: ) currently serves 68 cities in 35 states. Based in Dallas, Southwest currently operates more than 3,300 flights a day and has more than 35,000 Employees systemwide who work hard each and every day to provide excellent Customer service and make a difference in the community. To learn more about Southwest’s community involvement

Military Officials to Deploy Assessment Team to Haiti.

MIAMI (AFNS): U.S. Southern Command officials here will deploy a team of 30 people to Haiti to support U.S. relief efforts in the aftermath of the Jan. 12 7.0 magnitude earthquake.

The team, which includes U.S. military engineers, operational planners, and a command and control group and communication specialists, will arrive in Haiti Jan. 13 on two Air Force C-130 Hercules aircraft.

C-130

The team will work with U.S. Embassy personnel as well as Haitian, United Nations and international officials to assess the situation and facilitate follow on U.S. military support.

Other immediate response activities include;
– At first light Jan. 13, a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter evacuated four critically injured U.S. Embassy staff to the Naval Station Guantanamo, Cuba, hospital for further treatment.
– Elements of the Air Force 1st Special Operations Wing are deploying Jan. 13 to the international airport at Port au Prince, Haiti, to provide air traffic control capability and airfield operations. They are expected to arrive in Haiti in the afternoon.
– A Navy P-3 Orion aircraft from the Forward Operating Location at Comalapa, El Salvador, took off early Jan. 13 to conduct an aerial reconnaissance of the area affected by the earthquake.
– The Navy aircraft carrier, USS Carl Vinson, is under way and expected to arrive off the coast of Haiti Jan. 14. Additional Navy ships are under way to Haiti.

SOUTHCOM officals are closely monitoring the situation and is working with the U.S. State Department, United States Agency for International Development and the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance and other national and international agencies to determine how to best respond to this crisis.

SOUTHCOM officials are well versed at providing humanitarian assistance in the region. Since 2005, the command staff has led U.S. military support to 14 major relief missions, including assistance to Haiti in September 2008. During that mission, U.S. military forces from USS Kearsarge and other units airlifted 3.3 million pounds of aid to communities that were devastated by a succession of major storms.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the Haitian people and all those affected by this devastating earthquake,” said Army Col. James Marshall, the command spokesman for SOUTHCOM.

Nigeria to allow U.S.-trained air marshals on flights

ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigeria will soon allow U.S.-trained air marshals on its flights to the United States to boost air security after a botched bombing attack on a U.S.-bound airliner, a federal minister said.

World

"The United States approached Nigeria to have their marshals assist in the training and equipping of (Nigerian) marshals," Aviation Minister Babatunde Omotoba told reporters on Wednesday.

Omotoba said an agreement was expected to be signed with the United States "very soon."

Nigeria has been under pressure to boost its air security following the failed Christmas Day bombing attempt on a U.S. airliner blamed on Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

The United States has put Nigeria on a list of countries required to have tighter air security. Starting this month, passengers flying from Nigeria to the United States must undergo the same checks as people from Iran, Afghanistan and Cuba.

Nigeria, along with other countries including the Netherlands, Britain and Canada, will start using full-body scanners at its international airports to try to prevent such a security breach happening again.

Abdulmutallab, 23, has been charged with trying to blow up Northwest Airlines flight 253 as it approached Detroit from Amsterdam on December 25 with almost 300 people on board. He transferred to that flight from a KLM flight from Lagos.

Piper may enter light sport arena

Rumors in Europe indicate Piper Aircraft is strongly considering a 49-percent stake in Czech Sport Aircraft and may adapt that company’s SportCruiser for the American light sport aircraft market.

A spokesman for Piper said he could not confirm or deny the report by flightglobal.com, but added that Piper sometimes signs a letter of intent in order to look more closely at potential acquisitions. Flightglobal.com said the potential deal has been reported in a Czech business publication as a $30 million proposal. The holder of the 40-percent share is Slavia Capital.

Czech Sport Aircraft is the successor to the bankrupt Czech Aircraft Works. If the report is true, an announcement could come from Piper as soon as next week during the U.S. Sport Aviation Expo in Sebring, Fla.

Bydanjohnson.com lists the all-metal SportCruiser as the fifth best-selling LSA in the United States with fewer than 100 sold, despite the company’s bankruptcy. Flight Design has led the LSA market since the light sport movement began.

By regulation, all LSAs are limited to two seats. The SportCruiser comes in several models ranging from $117,000 to $150,000, depending on equipment and avionics options. The company claims a cruise speed of anywhere from 108 KTAS to 118 KTAS, depending on which Web site you are reading. A 100-hp Rotax ULS engine powers it.

Mid Island Air Service, a U.S. dealer for the SportCruiser, lists several SportCruisers for sale. The useful loads range from 505 to 595 pounds, depending on the model and equipment. It carries a total of 30 gallons of fuel in the wings and has a demonstrated crosswind component of 12 knots.

Hawker Beechcraft lays off 70 workers

Hawker Beechcraft Corporation has issued a “Warn” notice for the pending layoff of 70 workers. Many are on the King Air assembly line while others are material handlers, The Wichita Eagle reported.

Company officials do not comment on pending layoffs. The company has laid off 3,220 workers since 2008, the newspaper reported. The total layoffs for all aerospace workers in Wichita is 13,000. Cessna accounts for 8,200 of those, although it recalled 180 workers last week.

CEOs of both Cessna Aircraft Co. and Hawker Beechcraft warned as early as last year that an economic recovery for them would take longer than for the rest of the country. As soon as the large corporations recover, they can begin to order business jets once again. That could take two to three years.

7th Annual ‘Living Legends of Aviation’® Awards to Honor Tom Cruise, Dr. Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin and Other Aviation Legends.

Beverly Hills, CA: The 7th Annual Living Legends of Aviation Awards, presented by Learjet, are taking flight on January 22nd at the Beverly Hilton.

John Travolta, the official Ambassador of Aviation, will present Tom Cruise with the “Top Aviation Inspiration and Patriotism Award.” Tom Cruise’s passion for aviation started at a young age. Growing up in modest economic conditions, Cruise’s family moved frequently but once young Tom hung his P-51 Mustang photo in his bedroom, he felt at home. Not surprisingly, he now owns a P-51 Mustang and other aircraft and is an accomplished aerobatic pilot. Top Gun, the highest grossing aviation movie of all time, has inspired generations of young pilots and patriotism in many Americans. Cruise’s flying machines and commitment to aviation define his passion for flight

Dr. Buzz Aldrin will receive the “First Out of This World Landing and Take-Off Award.” John Travolta, the Ambassador of Aviation, will present the award. Buzz took his first airplane ride with his father when he was 2 years old. His father, a military man, served as aide to Billy Mitchell, the father of the U.S. Air Force. As a boy, Buzz showed an early interest in all things mechanical, designing all types of contraptions. As a young man he flew 66 missions in Korea. Astoundingly, walking on the moon barely tops the very long list of successes and challenges that have defined Buzz Aldrin’s life as a pilot, military man, scientist, astronaut and one of the world’s most forward-thinking futurists. “The world needs to venture outward to satisfy our curiosity, our need to achieve and learn more about our place in this magnificent universe,” says Aldrin. In 2009, the world celebrated the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11. He is one of only 12 astronauts to walk on the moon, and at age 80, is not slowing down. Buzz Aldrin continues to inspire.

Preston Henne- “Aviation Industry Leader of the Year” – Pres Henne has earned the aviation industry’s highest leadership award. Henne became VP of General Dynamics in July 1999 when the company acquired Gulfstream. He is responsible for Gulfstream’s product program management, engineering, and flight operations. He joined Gulfstream in 1994 and is credited with the design, development and certification of the Gulfstream V aircraft, which was awarded the 1997 Collier Trophy. Henne’s leadership, management and engineering skills have earned him extraordinary respect and admiration throughout the aviation industry.

Elon Musk- “Aviation Entrepreneur of the Year” – South African born, Elon Musk, an American physicist, inventor, entrepreneur, innovator and philanthropist, is best known for founding PayPal, Tesla Motors, and SpaceX. His father inspired his love of technology. In 1999 Musk co-founded x.com, an online financial services and email payments company. He later changed the company’s name to PayPal and sold the company in 2002. Musk founded Tesla Motors, and is Chairman and CEO of the electric sports car company. The company is now developing an economical four-door electric sedan. Musk founded and serves as Chairman and CEO of Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), which was recently awarded a multi-billion dollar contract with the U.S. Government to develop and build space launch vehicles for NASA to replace the retiring space shuttles.

Joe Clark- “Lifetime Aviation Entrepreneur”- Joe Clark’s early fascination with aviation developed into a lifelong passion. He founded JetAir, the first Learjet distributorship in the Northwest in 1965. His career moved to Raisbeck Engineering where he became VP of Sales. He later partnered with Milt Koult to form Horizon Air, a highly successful Seattle-based regional airline that was purchased by Alaska Airlines. In 1988, Clark, Clay Lacy, and Bruce McCaw formed the Friendship Foundation, raising more than $500,000 for children’s charities, as they set a world speed record flying a 747 around the world. In 1991, Clark and Dennis Washington founded Aviation Partners, inventing and developing bl ended winglets. Clark’s innovations and entrepreneurial impact reach well beyond the aviation industry. His patented winglets are making a huge ecological impact, saving millions of gallons of fuel and diminishing wear on aircraft engines. A recipient of the Horatio Alger award in 2008, Clark is the only person who has been honored as both Aviation Entrepreneur of the Year and Lifetime Aviation Entrepreneur, receiving the Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2005.

Kermit Weeks – “Bob Hoover Freedom of Flight Award” – As a child, Kermit Weeks was a “dreamer and a designer.” When he was 13, his life’s focus became flight and aircraft. He was always fascinated with technical things. Weeks has the largest private collection of vintage aircraft in the world, with over 140 aircraft. All of these aircraft are well-maintained and flying. As founder of Fantasy of Flight, Weeks is dedicated to teaching young people about aviation and flight. Fantasy of Flight is billed as “the world’s greatest aviation attraction”.

Kurt Russell – “Aviation Mentor Award” – Highly successful life-long actor Kurt Russell says, “Flying has taught me more about who I really am than anything I’ve ever done.” Nearly 22 years into his love affair with flying, he encourages others to fly and mentors many pilots in and out of the entertainment business. He’s positively passionate about learning every aspect of flying. “You know what they say about a pilot’s license? It’s a license to learn.” Kurt continues, “Leave your ego at the door; when you get into a plane, it’s serious business. And yes, it’s a love affair in the air that continues to add joy to my life.”

This year’s celebrity/ Legend attendees include: John Travolta, Bob Hoover, Kurt Russell, Clay Lacy, Morgan Freeman, Dr. Buzz Aldrin, Tom Cruise, Joe Clark, Maj. Gen. William Anders, Cliff Robertson, Tony Bill, Dr. Forrest Bird, Carroll Shelby, James Raisbeck, Linden Blue, Barron Hilton, Sir Richard Branson, Harrison Ford, Gene Cernan, Julie Clark, Dick Rutan, Pat Epps, Greg Herrick, Alan Klapmeier, Bob Lutz, Lee Iacocca, Bruce McCaw, Lorenzo Lamas, Max Moga, Zoe Dell Lantis Nutter, Paul Poberezny, Mike Melvill, Vern Raburn, Si Robin, Frank Robinson, Ed Swearingen, Sean Tucker, Steven Udvar-Hazy, Emily Howell-Warner and Kermit Weeks.