Honestly, that program is more likely to turn up drug running or theft from airports/aircraft than terrorism.
In terms of seeing odd or unsafe behavior, I feel a moral obligation to talk to a pilot I see doing something unsafe. Talk to him/her, not call the Feds. There's a pretty lively debate about talk face-to-face vs call the Feds. While I've had excellent interactions with the FAA at every turn, I've also read absolute horror stories of other interactions, so I'm still inclined to offer a "word to the wise" type conversation rather than dropping a dime on someone. If I feared for my safety or the safety of others, and didn't want to talk directly to the person, there's ready and ample means to get such an inquiry started.
And of course, there are codes (that are basically an open secret) for hijack situations and it would not be hard to encode a message to ATC without using the most well-known code. I don't want to link them directly, but google "squawk codes" and it'll come right up.
Honestly, that program is more likely to turn up drug running or theft from airports/aircraft than terrorism.
In terms of seeing odd or unsafe behavior, I feel a moral obligation to talk to a pilot I see doing something unsafe. Talk to him/her, not call the Feds. There's a pretty lively debate about talk face-to-face vs call the Feds. While I've had excellent interactions with the FAA at every turn, I've also read absolute horror stories of other interactions, so I'm still inclined to offer a "word to the wise" type conversation rather than dropping a dime on someone. If I feared for my safety or the safety of others, and didn't want to talk directly to the person, there's ready and ample means to get such an inquiry started.
And of course, there are codes (that are basically an open secret) for hijack situations and it would not be hard to encode a message to ATC without using the most well-known code. I don't want to link them directly, but google "squawk codes" and it'll come right up.
Edit: here's a fascinating account that I have no reason to think is other than truthful: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/rec.aviation.piloting/...