I understand her desire to credit the passengers and crew. And I understand her desire to explain that the post-incident system worked. But she wove the two together in an ill-thought-out manner by putting her description of the passenger response immediately after her statement that “the system worked”. It was clumsy; it took a few sentences before it became clear she was talking about the response system rather than the prevention system. It’s not a firing offense, but I think it’s fair to criticize her presentation. Had she said the passengers and crew responded heroically, and the post-incident system worked in such-and-such ways, and we’re now working internationally to modify security procedures to fix where the system didn’t work there would be no room for criticism.

#58 SixDegrees nailed it. It’s not nearly as big a controversy/problem as the right pretends, but she really did screw up. Her job is to give a clear, concise, accurate description, and instead she gave a clumsy, muddled response that needed clarification.