Colgan: Atlantic City, the Las Vegas of the East Coast. But gambling habits are not the only well-kept secrets in this town. These are US Federal Air Marshals at a training facility in Atlantic City. Their identities are a closely guarded secret – their faces and those of instructors who are still serving officers, cannot be shown.

Trainer: They’re going to have to learn to shoot from a seated position, movement is part of their training.

Colgan: One could be sitting next to you on any flight into or out of the U.S. – and they won’t all look like Arnold Schwarznegger. They’re members of a revamped Air Marshal agency, born of the September 11 hijackings of four American commercial airliners.

Papantoniou: Oh, a major change, a major change – you cannot compare the federal air marshal service now as it was prior to September 11.

Colgan: It effectively meant rebuilding the agency from the ground up, giving air marshals greatly expanded powers and duties.

Papantoniou: Setting up a new agency is a monumental task and this has never been done before in such a short period of time in the history of federal law enforcement. The Federal Air Marshals now are really much more of a law enforcement entity than ever before. They get involved in enforcing, not only laws involving terrorist activities but various kinds of violent crimes that can occur on an aircraft.

Colgan: Previously, Air Marshals were attached only to international flights – now, it’s domestic flights too. Only the pilot and crew will know they’re on board and they’ll make split second decisions on whether to act – in a situation that can provide no back up.

Colgan: Prior to September 11 there were just 33 federal air marshals for the entire United States. Now they number in their thousands, fanning out across a flight system that involves some 26,000 flights a day.

Papantoniou: After 911 there were a lot of people who came on board out of patriotism, that came over to be a part of this and the job is very demanding. Any federal law enforcement job is demanding. Federal Air Marshal service is no different. Some people realise the pace is just a little bit too much that they can’t handle.

Trainer: Okay this is a flight from Moscow to Denmark.

Actor: This is a hijack, don’t anybody move.

Colgan: Thirty seven year old Anna, who will only narrow down her country of origin to Scandinavia – applied for the job just weeks before September 11. The urge to join was even greater after.

Anna: I knew, I knew I had to get that job, I knew it. For me, especially being a female, it was a good surprise to be in the aircraft. Most of all, what was appealing to me then, was what I could do for my new country.

Colgan: The American airline industry is struggling to stay in the air. The fear of reprisal attacks saw passenger numbers dramatically trail off in the lead up to the war in Iraq and they’ve continued to fall. Industry bodies estimate losses during the war could total more than 10 billion U.S. dollars and mean liquidation for major airlines. The only way to keep people flying, is to convince them, it’s safe.

Papantoniou: I can’t help but think every passenger that gets on an aircraft is hoping that there will be a federal air marshal team on board, there’s a great amount of confidence in knowing that, god forbid something happens, there will be somebody there to take action, so I feel we give a tremendous amount of confidence to the average passenger.

Colgan: It’s impossible to put an air marshal on every flight; each assignment is based on a risk assessment. It will cost billions of dollars, but the agency is convinced the skies are now considerably safer than they were eighteen months ago.