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Dem lawmaker files bill to close flight school identification loophole
A Democratic member of the House Homeland Security Committee said Thursday that he was filing a bill to close a loophole in flight training lawmakers said this week could allow potential terrorists to train in the United States.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said his measure would fix a loophole that a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report said could allow foreign flight students to be cleared for flying lessons earlier than they would be cleared to fly commercially on U.S. airlines by requiring the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to check flight students against the national “No Fly” list.
Lawmakers on the Homeland Security Committee’s Transportation Security subcommittee were told Wednesday that presently, flight students are certified by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) first.
Thompson said Thursday it was time to change that procedure.
“We cannot allow loopholes exploited by the 9/11 hijackers to be exploited again,” he said in a statement released by his office.
The measure has been dubbed the Flight School Security Act of 2012.
Lawmakers on the Transportation Security panel hammered TSA officials for the loophole on Wednesday.
"It is completely unacceptable that a decade after 9/11, GAO has uncovered weaknesses in our security controls that were supposed to be fixed a decade ago," the chairman of the committee, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), said.
Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-Minn.), a former pilot and federal air marshal, agreed.
"[Zacarias] Moussaoui was actually flying the same simulators I flew at Northwest Airlines, so this is kind of a personal issue for me,” Cravaack said in reference to a French citizen who was convicted of conspiring to take part in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks after taking flight lessons in Oklahoma.
Thompson said his measure was being co-sponsored by Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), Danny Davis (D-Ill.) and Cedric Richmond (D-La.).
