Travelers flying from Eugene Airport today will have their luggage examined more closely because of more stringent bag checking methods.
“We’re telling customers to pack their patience,” Horizon Air spokeswoman Cheryl Temple said.
Airport officials are being patient as well, as Horizon and the other two airline companies that service Eugene Airport haven’t said what security measures they’ll use to screen baggage for bombs. Congress passed the Transportation and Aviation Security Act on Nov. 19 and required airlines to check bags using one of four procedures. Starting today, bags must be examined by hand, screened by special bomb detection machines, passed by the noses of canine bomb-sniffing squads or kept on the ground until the bag’s owner is aboard the plane.
“The airlines are not quick to fully discuss what they’re doing,” Eugene Airport Director of Operations Mike Coontz said. The Eugene Airport doesn’t have one of the million-dollar bomb machines yet, and there are no dog teams in place, so airlines are left with two options. Manually searching bags is more thorough, but could cause long lines. And 100 percent bag matching, the security process that requires a passenger to be on the same plane as the luggage, has its own problems.
Coontz reiterated that a passenger failing to show up for a flight after checking a bag would have the bag yanked from the cargo hold of the plane, so no-shows could cause considerable delays. Bag matching doesn’t foil suicide bombers, and right now the government only requires airlines to bag-match on the first stage of a flight. This may streamline the process, but does nothing to keep passengers safe from bags transferred onto planes on the second or third leg of a journey. In fact, a transferred luggage bomb destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.
Coontz said whatever method the airlines use, they’ll have to work out problems on their own.
“Baggage screening is not within our oversight,” Coontz said. “Although we will work with the airlines, at the end of the day, I don’t check up on them.”
E-mail community reporter Brook Reinhard
at [email protected].