It's Not So Hard to Make Flight Safe
Keep 'em Flying
A few simple steps could lure Americans back onto airlines
By Jim McTague (Oct. 1, 2001 Issue of Barron's)
While President Bush last week unveiled proposals to beef up airline security, some safety experts contend that a number of alternative measures could be implemented, more cheaply and quickly, to lure Americans back to flying. The most direct, and controversial, expedient: Arm the pilots, which the President has publicly opposed.
It's quite possible none of the September 11 hijackings would have succeeded if the pilots had been armed, contends William Vassell, chief executive of Command Security a New York security company.
Be that as it may, Bush instead is seeking an increase of in-flight air marshals to deter would-be air pirates. But former pilot Stephen Luckey, a leading expert on airline safety, says a sky marshal can be overcome and disarmed in a passenger-cabin attack. Indeed, passenger-train robbers in Europe have for years employed knockout gas to subdue passengers -- a ploy that could be easily aped by potential airline hijackers. Luckey, who is chairman of the National Security Committee for the Air Line Pilots Association International, adds that testers with fake badges and real guns have been breaching security zones at airports for years.
Luckey, who carried a gun in the 1970s and early 1980s while flying for Northwest Airlines (with the blessing of the company's brass), contends guns are needed in the cockpit as a final line of defense against hijacking. He says pilots could be trained to be proficient in firearms and deputized as federal agents in as little as a month. FBI agents who are also trained pilots could be placed in cockpits right now, he adds.
There are several other steps to protect passengers, experts tell Barron's, that can be in place in a matter of weeks, not the four-to-six months that President Bush says it will take to implement his $3 billion security plan. Bush's proposals include a big increase in the number of sky marshals; stronger doors for aircraft cockpits; federal takeover of airport security; and the stationing of National Guard troops at airport inspection stations to prevent breaches.
Enhanced security need not come at undue inconvenience. The Federal Aviation Administration currently is ordering new security measures at check-in that could make air trips more of a hassle than driving in some cases.
"The industry is bleeding from a gut wound, and the FAA is trying to kill it off," complains Luckey, who believes lengthy security checks will chase away business travelers, who are airlines' most profitable customers.
The government also has instructed security guards to begin patting down passengers if and when the U.S. military launches attacks abroad. Passengers already have been instructed to show up three hours ahead of scheduled departures because of long lines at the check-in counters.
In contrast, frequent fliers at Israel's highly security-conscious Ben Gurion International Airport already can pass through security at walking speed because handprint-reading kiosks confirm their identities. Nearly 80,000 Israelis not considered security risks have enrolled in the system.
Of course, the security dilemma in the U.S. is many times more complex than that of tiny Israel. The U.S. airlines board 665 million passengers and air shippers haul 30 billion tons of cargo each year. In the U.S. alone, there are about 8.5 million flights a year, according to the Air Transport Association.
But, as first steps, inexpensive technology to prevent hijackers from boarding planes using false identification can be deployed. Electronic palm readers were used at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Several banks already use optical scanners and thumbprint readers to confirm the identities of account holders. The technology is getting smaller and more sophisticated. Global Pathways, a Reston, Virginia company, has teamed up with URU Technologies to produce a prototype of a "smart" credit card that allows a customer to provide positive thumbprint identification to the cashier. If a thief tries to use the card, it simply will not work. The technology could be applied to passports and drivers licenses, according to Global Pathways' Carolyn Stortstrom. There are a dozen of similar systems out there already, we're told.
Airline passengers are put off as much by the hassles of new security measures as fear of hijacking. Could a few simple steps make them safe without inconvenience?
As for step two: tap other federal agents to serve as sky marshals until new recruits are hired, trained and placed into service. The U.S. Postal Service has one of the finest armed police forces in the world. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has about 600 armed agents, many with SWAT training. On top of that, we have tens of thousands of military personnel who could be trained for the job.
Step three: The security cameras proposed last week by President Bush can be installed almost immediately to give the cockpit a view of what is going on in the passenger section. Swissair has employed such a system for nearly 30 years. Schools have been using them in buses for a decade. Digital technology makes possible systems with candy-bar-sized cameras and five-inch wireless monitors for just $300. Flight attendants had objected because they didn't want their bosses to monitor inflight job performance. But, says Tom Farrier, director of safety programs for the Air Transport Association, which represents airlines, "since September 11, everything is back on the table."
Step four, and perhaps the most controversial step of all, would be for flight attendants to be trained in the martial arts to serve as a second line of defense in the passenger cabin.
The recent disasters notwithstanding, flight attendants are reluctant to radically rethink their role in the cabin. "We hope that our role going forward is safety," says Jeff Zack, spokesman for the Association of Flight Attendants in Washington, D.C. "And what we need is to make sure that the training is continuously updated." If experts believe that includes some self-defense training, so be it, he says. But he adds, "attendants should not be cast in the role of sky marshals."
Step five: thoroughly review and upgrade the airline industry's Computer Assisted Passenger Screening System. Few travelers are aware of this, but since 1998, the airlines have been using CAPS to look for terrorists. CAPS uses information obtained in the reservation process to screen out passengers for additional security checks. A programming flaw that was just corrected last week prevented the system from zeroing in on any of the 19 men who the government says were responsible for the September 11 terrorist attack.
Step six: The President should ask Congress to mandate national identity cards so we can know who is in the country legally and also keep closer watch on visitors from abroad.
A national identification system was proposed during the 104th Congress in 1997 as a means of tracking undocumented workers, deadbeat parents and to maintain data pertaining to health insurance, says Annie Anton, a privacy expert at North Carolina State University. Outcries from civil libertarians helped to defeat the measure. A similar bill was introduced this year in the House of Representatives.
"People ought to be able to tell if a person is lawfully in the U.S.," says New York City immigration lawyer Michael Wildes, who represented one of the terrorists implicated in the Khobar Towers bombing that killed U.S. servicemen stationed in Saudi Arabia.
Wildes says federal investigators also should be able to track the activities of persons here on temporary visas. "If a person is studying structural engineering and consorting with terrorists, we want to know this." We need, of course, to be sensitive to the concerns of civil libertarians, he says. That said, he has this advice for the President and the decision makers: "We don't need to be politically correct when faced with a gun to our head." |
