A wing and a prayer
How money woes and security snafus conspire against safer skies
America's beleaguered air carriers returned to the skies in fits and starts last week as the Federal Aviation Administration warned travelers that security will be beefed up and asked for passenger forbearance. The forbearance part seemed actually to be happening. At Baltimore-Washington International Airport, more than 200 people stood in a queue to get tickets with hardly a sigh of complaint. But the security part--ranging from overzealous in some places to inattentive in others--was hardly comforting.
The battle over safety, it turns out, isn't just about terrorists. For years, two of the biggest impediments have been passengers and airlines. The first hate high ticket prices and long delays. The financially troubled airlines have long said they can't afford the additional costs of massive security upgrades.
"Resistance." Even after last week, that may still be the case. Just hours after the attacks in New York and Washington, U.S. News learned, airline executives balked at some federal proposals to increase security. For example, adding a final passenger check at the gate and stepping up screening of airport workers met with airline resistance, according to a source who attended meetings of the airlines, their industry groups, the FAA, and the Department of Transportation. The airlines agreed to most of the FAA's proposals, the source said, but only the less costly measures, like eliminating knives, and halting curbside check-in. A spokesman for the Air Transport Association of America, an airline industry group, called that account "unequivocally wrong." Michael Wascom said the airlines even suggested some of the measures, such as pre-boarding aircraft security sweeps and increasing uniformed police presence in airports. Wascom said the ATA is also calling on the federal government to take over the responsibility and expense of aviation security. "It's national security we're talking about," he says. "That's a government responsibility."
Other FAA recommendations aired at the meeting, such as fortifying the cockpit door, matching all bags to passengers, and significantly expanding the passenger-profiling system, were not immediately feasible, Wascom says. However, he says, they could eventually be implemented. One airline source also confirmed that not all the FAA's proposals were adopted.
The fight over safer skies is not a new one. Victoria Cummock served on a presidential commission on aviation safety and security after her husband was killed on Pan Am 103 over Scotland in 1988. Since then, Cummock says, she has seen "years of repeated industry resistance to anything that has to do with passenger safety or security." Airlines have consistently resisted a proposal to match each bag in the hold with a passenger on domestic flights. The recommendations of an FAA-funded study published last year, "Safe at Home? An Experiment in Domestic Airline Security," were resisted by the airlines. The airlines said bag matching would cost $300 million a year; the study said it would increase costs by only 40 cents a ticket and delay flights by an average of seven minutes.
But it's not just the airlines. The FAA bears some responsibility, experts say. FAA rules ban the carrying of guns and bombs, while knives, like those used by last week's terrorists, were considered so innocuous that FAA regulations permitted passengers to carry on any blade less than 4 inches long.
advertisement
