U.S. airlines and the government are scrambling to put in place a new checked baggage security program this week that fails to meet a requirement mandated by Congress to screen all bags for bombs and may cause flight delays.
With only a fraction of the necessary explosive detection equipment, bomb-sniffing dogs and trained bag check personnel in place at airports, the government will not meet the law's deadline to begin screening all checked baggage for bombs by Friday.
As an alternative, the screening gap will be closed with a plan to match bags with passengers on domestic flights. Bag matching is already done on international service.
"It will only tell you that its owner is traveling with it," said Michael Wascom, spokesman for the Air Transport Association, an industry trade group, about the plan to make sure passengers who checked bags boarded the same aircraft.
Critics and at least one aviation expert with knowledge of the government's security plan called bag matching a Pan Am 103 solution to a Sept. 11 problem. They noted it might have prevented the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, but is an impractical substitute for screening in the age of suicidal hijackers and would-be shoe bombers.
Moreover, big airlines oppose bag matching because it threatens to slow operations as they reel from a sharp decline in traffic after Sept. 11 and losses that could total $4 billion in the fourth quarter.
WASHINGTON -- As hard as the Bush administration is working to meet Friday's deadline for ensuring all airplane luggage is screened for explosives, an even bigger challenge looms: the year-end deadline for deploying thousands of sophisticated, costly bomb-detection machines at every U.S. airport.
The outlook isn't promising. Two months after President Bush signed a law mandating the equipment -- and outlining a larger federal role in air security -- the government has bought fewer than two dozen machines, and isn't yet sure how it will afford the $5 billion for the rest. Moreover, the estimated 2,200 machines needed aren't even available; just two companies have won federal certification for their products, which cost about $1 million apiece. Before Sept. 11, the Federal Aviation Administration had planned to wait until 2009 to begin phasing in requirements for airlines to electronically scan all checked bags for explosives.
While more costly than other methods, machines generally are believed to be less prone to error. Currently, only a tiny fraction of checked luggage is examined for explosives. Thursday, more than a month after Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta suggested the Friday deadline couldn't be met, the administration is expected to announce a combination of short-term screening methods, such as hand searches, bomb-sniffing dogs and new requirements for matching checked bags to boarded passengers before takeoff.
Congress gave the agency broad leeway in setting the rules; as it happens, not all bags would have to be searched or scanned -- those in cargo matched with a passenger, for instance.
That has led some authorities to question the effectiveness of bag-matching: It is based on the idea that a terrorist wouldn't board a plane once he or she had gotten a bomb loaded, yet that logic was upended by the Sept. 11 hijackers' suicides and the recent boarding of a Paris-to-Miami flight by a man charged with concealing explosives in his shoe.
But by the end of the year, the more than 400 U.S. airports must have a sufficient number of baggage-screening machines, many of them as large as pickup trucks and weighing several tons, to examine everything. With just 161 in use today at roughly 50 airports, airline officials and security experts are dubious about meeting the deadline. The legislation doesn't specify what would be done if it isn't met.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- New guidelines have been issued to airlines on how to meet Friday's congressional mandate that all checked bags be screened for explosives, a Department of Transportation spokesman confirmed Tuesday.
Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta is expected to outline the guidelines in a speech Wednesday to the Transportation Research Board.
Mineta is expected to tell airlines they must establish a "multi-layered system of security" that varies from airport to airport and uses security tools. The tools includes the expanded use of a computer-assisted passenger profiling system; manual bag searches; bomb-sniffing dogs; trace detection; and various types of X-ray systems.
Another option: bag matching, meant to ensure that no luggage goes on a plane unless the passenger who checked it is on board.
Travelers with US airlines are bracing themselves for delays at airports across the nation as new security checks on baggage come into force on Friday.
All checked baggage must be either screened or matched to passengers. One major airline, Delta, is introducing new procedures from today.
US Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta is expected to outline the security requirements at airport check-ins in a speech he is due to make today. The new rules, designed to achieve 100 per cent baggage screening, are part of the Aviation Security Bill signed by President George Bush last November.
Although aviation officials are hoping for minimal delays there is bound to be some disruption with the introduction of the new system.
Announcing its own arrangements, Delta Airlines said: "Effective today, Delta will no longer accept checked baggage at ticket counters or curbside locations less than 30 minutes before a flight's scheduled departure time."
[This message has been edited by doc (edited 01-16-2002).]
doc
Jan 18, 02, 7:42 am
Mineta Outlines Baggage Inspection Program
Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta said that all US airlines must inspect all baggage stored in cargo holds in compliance with the Aviation and Transportation Security Act signed into law by President George W Bush on November 19.
"We have entered a new era of transportation; an era in which a determined enemy has challenged one of America's most cherished freedoms, mainly the freedom of mobility," Mineta told the Transportation Research Board.
The Transport Department calculates that some 2,200 explosive-detecting scanners are needed to equip all 429 civilian airports in the US.
At present however, only 161 bomb-detecting scanners have been installed.
While airports are in the process of obtaining their scanners, the security act suggests other methods of inspecting baggage including regular scanners, manual inspection, bomb-sniffing dogs, or resorting to 'baggage-matching' - (matching each piece of baggage to a passenger on the plane.
By December 31, 2002, however, all US airports must be equipped with explosive-detecting scanners.
FOR YEARS the airlines have fought off baggage matching as an antiterrorism measure on the grounds that it would hopelessly snarl the air travel system. Last Friday most airlines started using baggage matching as one way to fulfill Congress's mandate that checked bags be inspected, and officials reported few problems beyond longer-than-usual lines at Logan and some other airports.
Admittedly, the airlines did not require matching bags to passengers on connecting flights, a significant loophole in the system. Also, baggage matching does nothing to deter the terrorist who is willing to kill himself while destroying an airplane. But the fact that the measure - along with inspections by machines, dogs, and security guards - worked as smoothly as it did is evidence that airlines and airports can take steps to improve security when they are forced to.
DFW International Airport Supports Provisions in Homeland Security Bill Addressing Airport Security
Providing Flexibility for Airport Security Modifications Saves Passengers Hours in Ticket Lines
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/020723/datu045_1.html
doc
Jul 27, 02, 8:56 am
The Airport-Security Backslide Begins
True to the G-man's code of conduct, John Magaw went quietly last week after he was abruptly fired as head of the Transportation Security Administration. But in axing Magaw, the Bush Administration sent a loud message: It is prepared to renounce the deadlines for making all airport screeners federal employees by November 19 and for examining all checked bags for bombs by December 31. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, the man who canned Mcgaw on July 18, showed up at Congressional hearings on Tuesday and pointedly refused to guarantee the twin deadlines will be met. And the White House has quietly told Congressional allies that it will not oppose legislation to delay the bomb-screening deadline by at least a year. What's all this mean for travelers? More chaos at security checkpoints while under-trained, underpaid screeners employed by private security companies remain on the job indefinitely. As for the bomb-screening deadline, it means another legal deadline scuttled at the behest of obstructionist airlines and airport managers. That unholy alliance has been ducking bomb-screening deadlines ever since the first federal law was passed after the Pan Am 103 bombing in December, 1988.