WASHINGTON (KRT) ­ Federal transportation and airline officials concede that they haven’t figured out how to screen all checked luggage for bombs, with only days to go to meet a legal deadline. But they promise to do it by Jan. 18.
Somehow.
“We do not have a specific plan yet,” Department of Transportation spokesman Hank Price said Tuesday. That’s despite daily meetings with airlines, and aviation security personnel working through the holidays. The nation’s airlines don’t have a plan either, officials acknowledged, and the solutions are likely to vary by airport and by airline.
Whatever the security system chosen, passengers should expect confusion and longer-than-ever delays in airports beginning Jan. 18, experts say.
“I just don’t see, operationally, how all airports can be compliant,” said Charlie LeBlanc, managing director of Air Security International, a Houston aviation security-consulting firm. “And if we’re not, what are we going to do? Nobody has the answers or nobody wants to talk about it.”
The Jan. 18 deadline is just one of four upcoming hurdles spelled out in the aviation security law that President Bush signed Nov. 19. Starting Feb. 1, the Department of Transportation must collect a $2.50 security fee from each passenger on every flight. On Feb. 17, a new federal agency, the Transportation Security Administration, must take over responsibility for aviation security from the Federal Aviation Administration. Soon after that, TSA personnel must take over passenger and bag-screening duty, now handled by private firms.
It all starts with checked bags. Under the new Aviation Security Act, each piece must be searched by hand or by a bomb-detecting machine, a bomb-sniffing dog or an X-ray machine. As a fallback, the law allows airlines to meet the new requirement by confirming that each checked bag belongs to a passenger who has boarded the plane.
The easiest option, experts say, is the fallback, known as 100 percent bag matching. But it has a big problem: While it prevents a terrorist from planting a bomb in an aircraft’s luggage hold and walking away, it won’t stop a suicidal terrorist like those aboard hijacked aircraft Sept. 11.
Moreover, 100 percent bag matching can cause substantial delays. The problem occurs when luggage without an owner is found, explained Geoff Askew, security chief of Qantas Airlines, the Australian carrier, which adopted the system a decade ago. At the start, he said, about 1 flight in 10 was delayed an hour or longer to unload, find and remove baggage without accompanying passengers.
Each of the other security options also has drawbacks, experts say.
Explosive-detection machines are everybody’s favorite choice, and the law mandates them by 2003. But there aren’t enough of them, they can’t be built fast enough and the current models trigger too many false alarms, experts say. They are also expensive: The 2,200 machines the nation’s airports need will cost $5 billion.
Enhanced X-ray machines, while not as effective as explosive-detection machines, can be built faster and more cheaply. But there aren’t enough of them either, said Cabal Flynn, a former Federal Aviation Administration security chief who retired in 2000.
Bomb-sniffing dogs are a sentimental favorite, but they, too, are in short supply, and training a new dog takes 11 weeks, FAA spokeswoman Rebecca Terrell said. The FAA has 175 dog-trainer teams at 39 airports and plans to increase that to 313 teams at the 80 busiest airports by the end of 2003, Terrell said.
Hand-searching every bag — the solution on which Israeli air security relies — would take more trained searchers and more time. It takes about 10 minutes per bag, experts said, or up to two hours additional waiting time per flight. It also takes space, which many airports lack.
Hand searches offer real deterrence. But if this option is chosen, expect “an absolute nightmare” of delays, said Tony Potter, former head of security at Tampa International Airport, now a Seattle consultant.