It would sure be nice to fix this at some point

What's the point of even having an air marshal, if they can't get on board the flight that they're supposed to be protecting?

The Washington Times is reporting on the problems that some (the government won't say how many, of course, "for security reasons", but the number has to be fairly significant in order to rate news coverage) Federal Air Marshals are having getting on flights. It seems that some of their names match ones on the "no-fly" list that airlines are given to use to deny some passengers boarding. Apparently even the ID, the badge and the gun aren't enough to convince the ticket agents.

Easy fix, right? Just send out a memo to the airlines spelling out the names that are conflicting, and giving them a contact number to call to straighten out the situation. After all, how long could this situation have been going on?

Oh, about six years or so.

"'In some cases, planes have departed without any coverage because the airline employees were adamant they would not fly,' said the air marshal, who asked not to be named because the job requires anonymity. 'I've seen guys actually being denied boarding.'
A second air marshal said one agent 'has been getting harassed for six years because his exact name is on the no-fly list.'"

What worries me? If this "no-fly" list is so effective, how come the affected air marshals aren't consistently denied boarding every time? Because they aren't, that means that the real terrorists on the list have a chance to get on, as well.

At least it's gratifying to see that the "special people" run into the same problems with these asinine policies as the rest of the peasantry.

"The Terrorist Screening Center announced April 10 it will automatically review nearly 500,000 names on its watch list that are frequently matched during airport screenings and other law-enforcement encounters with the general public, and remove those names that don't belong to actual suspects."

Well, it's about frickin' time.

I have to fly next week. Yay. Wish me luck.