Area airports are still struggling to determine how they will be affected by a bill passed Nov. 19 that would federalize airport security workers.
“We don’t know when federal staff will arrive,” said Steve Johnson, spokesman for the Port of Portland. However, state and federal officials have become increasingly common at both airports. Johnson declined to give specific figures, but added, “We’re talking dozens.”
Portland’s security efforts are being aided by 35 national guardsmen — 25 of whom have been assigned to the airport until April. Although Eugene is a much smaller airport than PDX, it has five guardsmen on assignment.
Mike Coontz, operations manager at the Eugene Airport, said he thinks federal screeners will start arriving within 60 days. The bill requires screeners to replace private employees within one year.
“Within the next few months, we’ll see the feds step in,” Coontz said.
The bill was passed unanimously by the Senate more than a month ago, but ran into some turbulence in the House. The final bill mandates the hiring of more than 28,000 federal screeners.
Kathy Weatherly, a legislative assistant for Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Eugene, agreed that new screeners won’t show up anytime soon.
“There probably won’t be new screeners by the new year,” she said.
Although actual federal screeners have yet to arrive in either Portland or Eugene, new regulations have already affected passengers. Portland has cordoned off more than 1,100 spaces deemed to be too close to the airport building — the idea is that airports will be less vulnerable to car bombs if vehicles can’t park close enough to do any damage.
Eugene has also implemented new parking regulations. The areas closest to the airport have been closed to parking.
“We’ve had to abandon some of our short-term parking,” Coontz said. And at both airports, tow trucks are “aggressively towing” any unattended vehicles.
The biggest headache for both airports is trying to figure out how to comply with the new bill and all its idiosyncrasies. In the last two weeks, more than 460,000 passengers passed through Portland’s airport. They were filtered, one by one, through 12 screening lines, and some were stopped and detained for things as trivial as carrying travel scissors.
Johnson wouldn’t specify how much money the airport had spent on security in the last two months, but Coontz said with new security measures, the Eugene airport expects to spend at least one million additional dollars on security this year.
“We don’t know for sure what it’s going to cost us,” Coontz said. But he pointed out that the airport has had unexpected cash outlays of at least $200,000 for security purposes since Sept. 11.
No matter how much money airports spend on security, the biggest question on everyone’s mind is whether passengers will continue to fly.
“By and large, they’ve taken it well,” Coontz said. Last year, the Eugene airport had 390,000 departures. Coontz admits that now departures are down 30 percent from pre-Sept. 11 figures.