Greg Gayden - Commercial Aviation 101

By Greg Gayden

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Smashwords Edition

Commercial Aviation 101

Greg Gayden, 2015-2017

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

Third Edition. All content within this book has been written and arranged exclusively by Greg Gayden. No office or person within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has endorsed this work, and all text, explanations, and any opinions within are, unless noted, solely those of the author. This book is not an official document or product of DHS, TSA or any U.S. government agency or component. All logos and government agency insignia are the property of their various agencies, organizations or companies.

Questions or Comments? E-mail the author:

All aircraft profile images provided with kind permission by norebbo.com. American Airlines Boeing 787-8 photo used for the Airplane Diagram was taken by Andy Egloff. Unless noted, all aircraft pictures were taken by Greg Gayden.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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All of the information that you are reading about in this book is open-source, which means that it is all publicly available and accessible to anyone with an Internet connection, even those few folks still plodding along with dial-up. For all the conjecture about the U.S. government classifying "everything" and being overly secretive, it is quite remarkable what information is made public. Between the public websites of federal government agencies, texts of public laws, a smorgasbord of Government Accountability Office reports (which most people probably never read, but Ive leaned on extensively in this book) and other raw statistics, it was rather simple to obtain more than enough information to explain everything in this book.

Internally, TSA is a (somewhat controversially) heavy user of what is called Sensitive Security Information (SSI). SSI is information that, if publicly released, would be detrimental to transportation security, as defined by Federal Regulation 49 C.F.R. Part 1520. Basically, SSI is considered sensitive, but not worthy of being classified.

As a category of information, SSI got its start in the Air Transportation Security Act of 1974 and is primarily used by people who work in transportation security. As SSI information cannot be released to the general public, you won't find any of it (airline security programs, detailed TSA screening procedures, etc.) here. SSI material cannot be released to persons without a need to know. 49 CFR 1520 discusses SSI in more depth; however, releasing SSI information to the public is grounds for being assessed a civil fine.

SSI information does not rise to the level of Secret or Top Secret data, release of which would cause grave damage to the national security of the U.S.

Ive been gainfully employed in the aviation security business since I joined the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in September 2002. For the past 13-plus years Ive worked as a regulatory Inspector in various positions both in the field and at TSA Headquarters.

I spent several years as a domestic Inspector at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) working with both foreign and domestic carriers, the airport itself, as well as conducting all the other functions that Inspectors do - dont worry; those are described elsewhere in this book.

In March 2009, I moved to the position of Regional Security Inspector at TSA Headquarters near Washington, D.C. While there I was responsible for overseeing a region that encompassed five Southwestern states (Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico) as well as three territories in the Pacific (American Samoa, Guam, Saipan) an area of over 50 commercial airports and 100-plus TSA inspectors in addition to providing technical guidance on aviation security regulations to various stakeholders and industry partners. I answered technical questions from Inspectors in the field and helped review and write new regulations that were being issued as well as the annual national work plan for inspectors. I also taught new hires at the TSI Basic Training course from time to time.

After a few years in D.C. I was ready to return home to Texas; in June 2012, I took a position as an international Inspector based in Dallas. Nowadays, I conduct foreign airport assessments and inspections of carriers at airports overseas (primarily in Canada, Mexico, and Central America).

In my free time, I enjoy airplane spotting (I am an unofficial world record holder for tail logs) and photographing commercial airplanes. When I was growing up my father would take me to watch the planes at LAX and London Heathrow I can still remember seeing the Concorde and old Pan Am 747s and I guess the fever has stuck with me since then. I also run a fairly popular website (DFW Tower.com) related to these endeavors and North Texas commercial aviation. Ive been quoted and had my website linked to several times in commercial aviation articles in both the Dallas Morning News and Fort Worth Star-Telegram and even on local television morning news programs.

Between my own personal interests and over fifteen years working in the industry, I think it is reasonable to say that Ive gained a healthy amount of knowledge and expertise both of aviation security and commercial aviation overall. After working for various lengths of time and visiting over 75 airports in the U.S. and another 50 or so in nearly two dozen foreign countries, Ive been fortunate enough to observe and learn how things are done in a wide variety of places. I typed this book as a way of writing it all down and sharing it well over 45,000 words that I hope you will find it somewhat useful.

GREG GAYDEN

Fort Worth, Texas

Aviation security has come a long way in our country to where it stands today. Long gone are the days when one could simply drive to the airport and walk onto the plane; of course, the memory of even a humble X-Ray and walk-through metal detector can seem quaint now as you stand in a circular device with your arms up and the walls of the machine rotating around your body. I can remember being invited up to the cockpit on British Caledonian flights as a young boy in the 1980s during the long trip to London; such a thing would not even be considered today with hardened cockpit doors that remain closed for nearly the entire flight.