“We’re not a security agency.” That is what Emirates Airlines’ president Tim Clark told Zawya Down Jones Thursday, according to a story posted today by the Wall Street Journal. In the phone interview Clark adds, “For the Obama administration to say that we dropped the ball on this, it’s a bit much.”

Emirates has been in the spotlight this week due to alleged Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad making it on-board a plane at JFK Airport in New York en route to Dubai, even though he was on the no-fly list.

Clark defends his airline, which the Obama administration scolded for not properly screening its passengers by saying, “Perhaps the U.S. needs to reexamine the flow of information between
all the different authorities and also take a look at exit controls.
The U.S. government must also be asking itself why it doesn’t have
tighter exit controls when entry controls are so strict.”

Since the Times Square incident last weekend, the Department of Homeland Security has made it mandatory that all airlines update their no-fly list every two hours, it was previously every 24 hours. Failing to follow orders could result in fines according to the government. Clark ended his phone call by saying, “At the end of the day, they caught the guy, so I don’t know why we’re being singled out.”

Source: Wall Street Journal

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