The Security Challenge
GA security poses significant challenges for policymakers and security experts because GA is highly diverse, geographically dispersed, and relatively open compared to commercial airports servicing passenger airlines and other protected infrastructure such as nuclear reactors and chemical plants. The security threat is not so much to GA assets themselves, but rather, from terrorists seeking to exploit GA assets to attack critical infrastructure or high profile targets. However, some GA assets could themselves become terrorist targets. For example, some corporate aviation operators have expressed concern that aircraft carrying high profile business leaders and executives, such as presidents of major U.S. corporations, could be targeted. Nonetheless, the primary threat identified regarding GA is the concern that aircraft may be used by terrorists to launch an attack against critical facilities or infrastructure.
A secondary threat is that terrorists may infiltrate or otherwise exploit GA to gain knowledge and/or access to the airspace system in the United States. It is known that some of the 9/11 hijackers trained in small GA airplanes in the United States before carrying out their attack using commercial jets. Consequently, following 9/11, there was a specific focus both from a law enforcement and a policy perspective on the security of flight schools within the United States. The Aviation and Transportation Security Act (ATSA; P.L. 107-71) originally called on the Department of Justice to implement a program to conduct background checks of all alien applicants seeking flight training in the United States in aircraft weighing more than 12,500 pounds and mandated security training for flight school employees. Vision 100 (P.L. 108-176) placed the responsibility for these flight school background checks in the hands of the TSA and expanded the program to include a notification requirement when foreign students initiate training in lighter aircraft weighing less than 12,500 pounds. These measures were enacted in direct response to the perceived threat that terrorists may infiltrate flight schools in order to gain operating knowledge of aircraft and the U.S. national airspace system.
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