Britain considers armed sky marshalls on planes.
Reuters


A British Airways Boeing 747 jetliner departs Miami, Florida in this June, 2002 file photo. (William Jenkins/View Full Size)
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain said Sunday it was considering putting armed sky marshals on passenger flights to guard against hijackers amid growing threats to Western travelers abroad.
Last week's attacks on Israeli targets in Kenya, which killed 16, and the Bali nightclub bombing in October, which killed nearly 200, mainly Australians, have forced governments to consider how to protect travelers abroad.

"Aviation security has moved up the agenda with the attacks in Kenya," said a spokesman for the Transport Department. "A wide range of security measures have been considered since Sept. 11, and sky marshals is one of them."

He denied a report in Britain's Sunday Times newspaper saying the government had already made its decision to introduce marshals, initially on trans-Atlantic flights.

"It hasn't been ruled in, but it hasn't been ruled out either," said the spokesman. "No date has been set for a decision."

Though marshals could not have prevented last week's attempted missile attack on an Israeli flight leaving Kenya because the missiles were fired from the ground, sky marshals might have been able to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks which were orchestrated from on board.

Armed Israeli sky marshals have been credited with foiling a number of attempted hijacks, most recently when an Israeli Arab tried to enter the cockpit of an El Al flight from Tel Aviv to Istanbul armed with a knife on Nov. 17.

The option of sky marshals was put to the British government in a report into airline security that it commissioned in May from former minister Sir John Wheeler.

The issue is one that attracts strong debate. Former easyJet chairman Stelios Haji-Ioannou told BBC television Sunday he thought passengers and crew could have the element of surprise over hijackers.


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