“For someone who has been in active duty for most of their adult life, the transition into the civilian world can be very different,” said Ryan Gallucci, deputy director at Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, a nonprofit service organization for military veterans.

“With this unemployment crisis, employers don’t recognize the skills that service members bring to the job market. What happens many times is they view folks coming off of active duty as inexperienced or entry level which doesn’t accurately reflect the responsibility that they may have had while serving in the military,” Gallucci said.

Obama calls for a new “Returning Heroes” tax credit granting a maximum of $2,400 for every short-term hire and $4,800 for every long-term unemployed veteran hire.

“It’s really a win-win, because right now the Department of Treasury pays a tremendous amount of money on unemployment benefits to veterans who are unable to find jobs in a weak economy,” Gallucci said. “By offering incentives for employers to hire them, we see it as something that will really broaden the tax base so it’s a lot more productive for veterans to reenter the workforce rather than having them collecting unemployment.”

Obama is also proposing an increase in the existing tax credit for companies who hire veterans with service-connected disabilities. For those who have been unemployed for six months or more could receive a maximum of $9,600 per veteran. For all other veterans, up to $4,800 in tax credit could be issued.

Joining forces with the Defense Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs, the administration is proposing a new reverse boot camp program which will help prepare service members to leave the military for the civilian workforce.

Gerald Kapinos, program manager with Student Veterans of America, said military training does not transfer into the academic world.  

“In a lot of cases, colleges and universities do not accept most military training because it doesn’t fit within their curriculum,” Kapinos said. “But this proposal does nothing to address that…offering an incentive for employers to hire somebody who’s not qualified isn’t going to really do anything.”

However, Kapinos said he does see the need for a transition program and that a more localized transition program would benefit veterans more rather than a single comprehensive class.

“Having a one size fits all approach for everybody getting out of  the military, there’s just so many different variables and dynamics that go into it,” Kapinos said. “You can’t create something that’s going to fit everybody’s needs.”

The President has challenged the private sector to hire or train 100,000 unemployed veterans who have served since September 11 or their spouses by the end of 2013.

“The military is very good at preparing service members to do their specific job in the military and I believe the hope here is that they can also prepare them adequately to compete in the civilian job market,” Gallucci said.

The Transportation Security Administration will be testing a prescreening program this fall to a group of select air travelers who will voluntarily provide personal information in exchange for expedited screening. This pilot program signifies TSA’s latest efforts in incorporating identity-based screenings as opposed to the physical screenings that are currently in place to measure security.

Hillary Stroud, from TSA’s office of strategic communications and public affairs said, “If we can confirm a person’s identity and learn a little more about them through information they opt to provide, and combine that information with our other layers of security, we should be able to expedite the physical screening for many people.” The new screening procedure will focus on higher-risk and unknown passengers while speeding up the progress for lower-risk and known travellers.

During the testing period this fall, TSA will make pre-screening assessments on passengers who are US citizens, along with certain members of Custom and Border Protection Trusted Traveler programs.

“I would certainly much rather have identity-based screening,” said Charlie Leocha, director of the Consumer Travel Alliance, a consumer advocacy group. “I’m a member of Global Entry and I’ve filled out a background form, they’ve taken my picture, they’ve taken my fingerprints and so when I travel outside of the country I can come back into the country through the immigration process and it takes me about two minutes.”

“I think that if more people were dealt with that way, it would be much better for TSA because they would be able to deploy their assets in a much more logical manner,” Leocha said.

At Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International and Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County airports, frequent flyers from Delta Air Lines will be qualified to participate. In addition, passengers in Miami International and Dallas Fort Worth International airports flying from American Airlines will also be eligible to participate in the pilot program.

If a traveller is qualified for expedited screening based on a background check  information will be embedded in the barcode of their boarding pass. At the checkpoint, TSA will read the barcode where the passenger may be directed to a designated lane for expedited screening so that they can avoid taking their shoes off and taking out their laptops.

“It willsignificantly change the travel experience for the trusted travellers,” Leocha said. “So they’ll go through a different system which will be less invasive. However, it will also change the program for the normal public because it’s going to eliminate probably around 15 percent of the people who have to be screened and therefore will also be able to have a much more efficient screening process and a faster screening process at the airports.”

After a string of incidents highlighting the controversies involved with pat-downs and TSA screeners, the new program may help to alleviate frustrations among frequent flyers.  

“We already do watch list matching by pre-screening passenger information, and that gives us more information than we had before – information that can help us determine where potential risks might be,” Stroud said. “We have better technology that improves detection of threats to aviation. Our Intel is better, and so is our ability to operationalize it. Focusing our efforts on the people we know nothing about and the high-risk passengers results in a better experience for everyone.” 

Congressional testimony of Larry Willis, program manager for the Science and Technology Directorate, argued that behavioral science and security is effective.

The evaluation compared the SPOT Referral Report process with a random screening process to see whether the correct screening decisions are made.

As a result, it was found that operational SPOT is nine times more likely to identify high-risk travelers versus random screening.

Since its inception in 2006, Behavior Detection Officers (BDOs) have been trained to identify potentially high-risk passengers who indicate threats and suspicious behaviors. However, this method has caused controversy as many have questioned its legitimacy – how can you be trained to detect whether people are conspiring terrorist attacks?

Sharon Weinberger, a national security writer said, “The Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) 2010 evaluation of the SPOT program reported that the BDOs have never caught a terrorist. And that is, after all, the goal of the program. If a high-risk traveler is simply someone who has a criminal background (like an outstanding arrest warrant), that doesn’t prove SPOT is effective with respect to counter-terrorism.”

A statement from TSA said:

“For security reasons, we cannot outline the specific behaviors that we have trained our behavior detection officers to look for, but we can tell you that no single behavior will result in a referral or call to law enforcement. BDOs are looking for a number of behaviors that, all together, indicate that a particular passenger should be scrutinized more closely.”

Further research is set to continue to validate the accuracy of the SPOT program in identifying other indicators, which could increase its accuracy.

Weinberger said the effectiveness of SPOT should be compared against non-SPOT trained agents, “[It} would tell us whether the SPOT protocol is effective, or whether the BDOs are simply pulling aside people based, for example, on profiling.”

Michael McCarthy, from TSA’s office of strategic communications said, “SPOT can be likened to ‘human alarm resolution.’  Just like an alarm at the walk-through metal detector signals a need for additional screening to resolve the cause of the alarm, certain behaviors set off an alarm for BDOs telling them they need to refer a traveler for additional screening to assess if the behaviors have either a threatening or non-threatening origin.”

The effects of shining bright lasers on an aircraft could create temporarily blindness for a pilot, which could endanger the lives and safety of passengers.

Chris Dancy, media relations director for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association said, “Illuminating an aircraft with a laser creates a significant safety-of-flight hazard. It puts the lives of the pilot(s) and passengers in jeopardy. It has the potential to create flash-blindness or actual damage to the eye at particularly critical phases of flight – take-off and landing – when the aircraft is low and slow, leaving little margin for error.”

Pointing a laser from the ground up could cost someone $11,000 – the maximum civil penalty the FAA can impose for such a violation. Legislation criminalizing incidents involving a laser device is currently pending in Congress.

Kelly Skyles, communications coordinator for the Association of Professional Flight Attendants said, “Pointing a laser directly at a crew member is a safety and security issue and does pose a danger to the safety of the flight as well as the cockpit crew members.

According to the FAA press release, this year alone pilots reported more than 1,100 incidents nationwide of lasers being pointed at aircraft. Reports have increased since a reporting system was set up in 2005 for pilots to report laser incidents – from nearly 300 in 2005 to 1,527 in 2009 and 2,836 in 2010.

The accessibility of inexpensive laser devises is reported to have contributed to the rise of laser incidents, including the identification of green lasers, which illuminates more light than red lasers.

“It is a direct and serious interference to the flight and a health hazard to crew members who encounter a laser in their eyes,” Skyles said. “Civil and criminal penalties within the confines of the law should be assessed to any individual who is caught pointing a laser toward an aircraft and potentially endangering lives.”

Some states have laws making it illegal for those who purposefully shine lasers into an aircraft cockpit, where people have been placed with federal charges.

The FAA has revised a proposal to enhance air carrier training programs, replacing the original plan released in January 2009.

“The FAA is proposing the most significant changes to air carrier training in 20 years,” said Randy Babbitt, FAA Administrator in a statement.

The proposal aims to improve the performance of pilots, encouraging them to practice for stall recovery.

Alison Duquette, spokeswoman for FAA said, “They are currently trained on how to recognize a stall but they are going to be getting additional simulator training on recovery from a stall.”

“Most of our training or the airline training is focused on not getting into a stall in the first place but if for some reason you do, Congress mandated that we offer additional training for how to actually get out of it,” Duquette said.

In light of the Colgan Air crash in 2009, which killed 50 people, the National Transportation Safety Board confirmed the pilot made a fatal decision when responding to a cockpit stall warning.

“The focus is for the pilots to use more simulator based training and most of the airlines already do this but by putting this in our regulations, [it will] make sure even the smaller airlines do this as well,” Duquette said.

Regulations for training dispatchers and flight attendants have also been rewritten. Flight attendants will be getting more frequent hands-on emergency training, which will be done every year as opposed to every two years.

Kelly Skyles, communications coordinator at the Association of Professional Flight Attendants said, “APFA supports hands-on training to enhance our qualifications and knowledge of our emergency procedures. Hands-on training enhance our safety and security skills as safety professionals.”

Further changes include remedial training for pilots with performance deficiencies who may have failed a proficiency test in the new proposal.

“We’re proposing that the airline have a program where if there was a pilot who has some kind of deficiency while they’re training, the airline would collect the data and monitor the pilot,” Duquette said, “They have to collect data on how they actually monitor their pilots as well so it’s not just them looking at each individual pilot, it’s how they as the airliner is monitoring the pilots as well.”

Since March, nine separate incidents have been revealed by the FAA, highlighting controllers sleeping on the job. In January, controllers in Texas and California were found falling asleep even while monitoring aircraft.

While some say sleeping controllers should be punished, others say sleep is necessary in order for them to work productively.

“The science is very clear,” said Bill Voss, CEO of the Flight Safety Foundation, a nonprofit organization working to improve global aviation safety.

“Anyone who works on a night shift risks fatigue. They have fairly high cognitive demands particularly at the end of the shift [so] it is important that several things happen,” Voss said.

“One, there has to be adequate opportunity for rest which is what you do by scheduling properly. Secondly, there has to be a commitment to get rest from the employee. Lastly, there has to be some level of mitigations where if you are really run down you need to have the opportunity to sleep, to take a rest. This has been done across the world for pilots in the cockpit and it really should be adopted as well in air traffic control.”

In April, the Federal Aviation Association made some changes to controller scheduling practices to avoid fatigue and give them more time between shifts.

Paul Takemoto, a spokesman for the FAA said, “Controllers now have a minimum of nine hours off between shifts. Previously, they had as few as eight.”

Further changes state that controllers are no longer allowed to swap shifts unless they have a minimum of nine hours off between the last shift they worked and the one they want to begin. Also, controllers are no longer able to switch to an unscheduled midnight shift following a day off.

However, one change the FAA is unwilling to make is for air traffic controllers to sleep on the job.

“The FAA has zero tolerance for sleeping on the job,” Takemoto said, “Controllers are expected to come to work rested and ready to work – they must take personal responsibility for safety in air traffic control towers.”

Although Voss says sleep is vital, he says politics makes it a hard case to sell.

“I think it’s kind of a long shot because of the extreme reaction we received from the politicians. This is just not something politicians want to spend political capital on. It’s a joke on the Tonight Show. Even though it’s very practical and very cheap, it just isn’t politically accessible.”

Because of recent incidents, the reputations of air traffic controllers have suffered.

“To some degree, some of it is deserved,” Voss said. “[But] they’re still the same people that landed all the airplanes in 40 minutes during 9/11 and I think you’ll see them try to redeem their reputation.”

In response to the NTB report, Boeing said:

“Boeing already has taken appropriate action by recommending lap-joint inspections to airlines worldwide on certain 737-300/400/500 airplanes, which the FAA also mandated as an airworthiness directive. To date, Boeing has confirmed that inspections are complete worldwide on nearly 80 percent of the 190 airplanes affected.”

Inspection procedures were underway on Southwest Airlines’ Boeing 737 fleet after a 5-foot crack was found in the top of an aircraft April 1, causing pilots to make an emergency landing. The incident brought about hundreds of cancelled flights for one of the largest airlines following the event.

In a press release, Mike Van de Ven, executive vice president and chief operating officer for Southwest Airlines said “prior to the event regarding Flight 812, we were in compliance with the FAA-mandated and Boeing-recommended structural inspection requirements for that aircraft. What we saw with Flight 812 was a new and unknown issue. We regret any customer inconveniences as a result of the inspections currently underway. Delays and cancelations are never the preference, however we are taking every precaution we can to ensure that our operation is safe.”

The Federal Aviation Administration issued an emergency safety order to examine the current state of early Boeing 737 models for damage that had similar takeoff and landing cycles.

“The FAA has comprehensive programs in place to protect commercial aircraft from structural damage as they age,” said Randy Babbitt, FAA administrator, in a press release.

“This action is designed to detect cracking in a specific part of the aircraft that cannot be spotted with visual inspection,” Babbitt said.

A Boeing 737-300 model lost pressure in the cabin, shortly after takeoff, on a flight originally scheduled to land at Sacramento. Instead, an emergency landing was made from about 36,000 feet from the air where pilots touched down at an Arizona military base. There were 118 passengers on board, none of whom were seriously hurt; however a flight attendant suffered a minor injury due to the occurrence.

Since the incident, inspections have discovered four 737 jets were found with similar subsurface cracks at one rivet. Furthermore, one airplane had crack indications at two rivets.

The U.S. Department of Transportation has issued a new set of airline passenger protections in efforts to eliminate the levels of uncertainty associated with flying.

These protections will aim to reimburse passengers for bag fees over lost baggage, provide greater compensation for consumers who are bumped from flights and shine a light on hidden fees.

“The rules will definitely have an improvement,” said Charlie Leocha, director of the Consumer Travel Alliance. “They will help with communication between the airlines and consumers so that we start to know what the problems are when flights are actually being delayed or cancelled. They will also help in terms of better compensation for denied boarding, or ‘bumping’ as we normally call it.”

In a press release issued by the Transportation Department, Secretary Ray LaHood said air travelers should be treated with the respect they deserve.

“Airline passengers have a right to be treated fairly. It’s just common sense that if an airline loses your bag or you get bumped from a flight because it was oversold, you should be reimbursed,” LaHood said.

A full disclosure of baggage fees, changes in reservations, meals and upgraded seats are now available to passengers. In addition, government taxes and fees that were previously kept from the public are included in the up-front fare quotation.

“The big changes here are the fact that what you see advertised will soon be the total airfare and all the mandatory taxes and fees,” Leocha said.

Along with more transparency, the DOT is expanding the existing ban on lengthy tarmac delays. This will require foreign airlines to adhere to a four-hour hard time limit on tarmac delays when flying internationally from U.S. soil. The new rule came to light after the December 2010 blizzard where passengers experienced extended delays by foreign carriers at the John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.

In spite of these improvements, Leocha said he would like to see additional changes to the rules.

“If you’re flying from Chicago to Miami and you’re going to be charged for one bag, you should be able to go on-line to find out how much that’s going to cost you, airfare plus the baggage,” Leocha said. “So right now the airlines have dodged a bullet, but it looks like the Department of Transportation is going to keep working on this and come out with a new rule by, I think, the end of this year.”

Until then, passengers can look forward to an easier travelling experience come August when these rules will take effect.

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration is aware of passenger frustrations regarding the 3.4 ounce limit, as they continually look to new technologies in efforts to alter the current restrictions.

“The security of the traveling public is TSA’s top priority,” said Michael S. McCarthy, TSA’s spokesman from the office of strategic communications and public affairs.

“As such, TSA is constantly evaluating and testing new technologies that could improve security procedures,” McCarty said, “deploying effective technology is a key component of TSA’s intelligence driven, risk-based approach to enhancing security.

“While we continue to aggressively work to find a way to relax the 3-1-1 requirements, we know liquid explosives still pose a threat to aviation security.”

Currently, under TSA’s restrictions for carry-ons, air travelers must restrict all liquids, gels and aerosols to be 3.4 ounces or smaller.

In order for passengers to carry these items on board and pass through security checkpoints, liquids have to be placed in a quart-sized zip-top plastic bag – one bag per traveler.

There are few exceptions to the rule. Prescription and over-the-counter medicines are allowed on board if they exceed the liquid limit. Also, parents to small children are able to carry baby formula and breast milk which exceed the 3.4 ounce rule on a plane.

According to TechNewsDaily.com, technological developments could lead the way in creating a new bomb–detecting ink which could put an end to the liquid restriction in the near future. The ink, mixed with tiny metal-oxide particles, would change from blue to yellow when contacted with peroxide-based explosives. This development could uncover explosives commonly used by terrorists, such as the 2005 London bombing attacks and the shoe bomber incident.

Even snow globes are under suspicion as they usually exceed the liquid restriction. Last October, a snow globe set off an evacuation during a screening process at Bradley International Airport in Connecticut as it raised suspicion during a bag screening.

Despite this incident, McCarthy said liquid restrictions remain a top priority.

“We will continue to work closely with our stakeholder and international partners to find a solution that effectively screens liquids and keeps the traveling public safe.”

Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said he will introduce new legislation requiring parental supervision during the pat-down of a child.

This all comes as a result of a YouTube video that showed a transportation screening officer patting-down a six-year-old girl.

“I am personally outraged and disgusted by yet another example of mistreatment of an innocent American at the hands of TSA,” Chaffetz wrote in a letter to John Pistole, TSA administrator.  “This conduct is in clear violation of TSA’s explicit policy not to conduct thorough pat-downs on children under the age of 13.”

Michael McCarthy, from TSA’s office of strategic communications did not comment on the new bill.

“TSA does not comment on pending legislation,” McCarthy said.

However, the office issued a statement on the young girl’s experience.

“TSA has reviewed the incident and determined that this officer followed proper current screening procedures.  However, in line with his vision to accelerate TSA’s evolution into a truly risk-based, intelligence-driven organization, Administrator Pistole has tasked the agency with exploring additional ways to focus its resources and move beyond a one-size fits all system while maintaining a high level of security.”

In regards to children receiving pat-downs, TSA’s website states that a child may receive a toned-down inspection. As younger passengers go through security checkpoints, parents are advised to make sure no items are left in their children’s pockets.

In a press release issued by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Chaffetz said,

“The agency must get serious about the manner in which it seeks to balance national security with personal privacy.  At the very least, it cannot continue to operate under the belief that little girls and handicapped children pose such a serious threat that TSOs must abandon all manner of decency when interacting with them.”

On the other hand, TSA say they will not underestimate any sort of terrorist threat.

“While recognizing that terrorists are willing to manipulate societal norms to evade detection, our officers will continue to work with parents to ensure a respectful screening process for the entire family at the checkpoint.”

As of now, TSA will be reviewing its screening procedures in efforts to avoid invasive pat-downs for low-risk populations.