Union: United’s in-flight attack could have been prevented if flight attendants hadn’t been at the border

As The Post has learned, passengers on a United Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Boston last year were forced to chase down a man who tried to stab a flight attendant because no flight attendants were present due to their ongoing deployments at the southern border.

At the height of the border crisis, the U.S. government deployed 200 air marshals to the border for 21 days, putting critical flights at risk, Sonya LaBosco, a retired federal senior air marshal who speaks on behalf of the Air Marshal National Council, told The Washington Post.

LaBosco knew from personal experience that there were always stewards on the Los Angeles-Boston route. She became even more concerned when passengers on Flight 2609 contacted her in March 2023, even though they knew they had to deal with the threatening passenger alone.

“Because we had air marshals deployed at the border, there were no air marshals on this flight,” she said.

“Our worst fears were realized every day when in-flight incidents occurred and flight attendants were on board to prevent passengers from being injured.”

That day – and every other day – air marshals were deployed to the border. They were there simply to “hand out water, make sandwiches, do Uber Eats rides … bring diapers and other things into the facilities and unload trucks,” LaBosco said, adding that it was “absolutely ridiculous.”

By stripping the air marshals of their police duties while releasing millions of migrants who cross the southern border illegally and then often fly on commercial flights, there is great fear that a second 9/11 could easily happen, LaBosco said.

In recent months, federal authorities have conducted major raids on suspected ISIS terrorists and people linked to terrorist smuggling rings who entered the country through the southern border. Some are still at large.

“It is extremely important for us to be on the long-haul flights because these are the flights that the 9/11 hijackers actually targeted and flew that day.”

That concern was highlighted by a U.S. regulator in a recent report examining aircraft security while understaffed air marshals were stuck at the southern border.

That report found that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which is responsible for overseeing aviation security escorts, had failed to assess “the operational impact” of the deployments on their “primary mission of securing the nation’s transportation system.”

“Without establishing performance metrics and assessing the risks associated with flight attendant deployments, TSA cannot ensure that deployments do not impact flight attendants’ mission to mitigate potential risks and threats to our nation’s transportation system…” the report said.

The regulator also found that the TSA spent $45 million on border operations between May 2019 and August 2023.

“In terms of costs, TSA incurred approximately $45 million in travel and payroll costs associated with deploying air marshals to the southwest border from May 2019 through August 2023,” the report said.