Deadline looms to screen luggage. The government wants airlines to screen all checked luggage by Jan. 18. Until technology is in place, that probably means longer waits.
By BILL ADAIR, STEVE HUETTEL and JEAN HELLER
© St. Petersburg Times
published January 9, 2002
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TAMPA -- Behind the US Airways ticket counter last week, there was lots of commotion around the CTX-5500.
The machine -- the only one at Tampa International Airport that can detect explosives in checked luggage -- swallowed large bags, scanned them for bombs and then spit them out. A long line of sky caps and passengers waited nearby.
The machine worked fine, but it wasn't enough. The airport might need 30 more.
In Tampa and around the nation, the airlines are scrambling to comply with a Jan. 18 deadline to screen all checked luggage, but they don't have enough staff, hardware or bomb-sniffing dogs to do the job. As a result, aviation industry experts predict long lines and flight delays as the airlines struggle to create complicated new screening programs.
"There's going to be an impact," said Gary Shults, head of the union that represents baggage handlers at Southwest Airlines. "It's probably going to increase the check-in time for most people."
The task is daunting because the nation's airlines currently screen less than 5 percent of checked bags. As of Jan. 18, they will have to screen them all.
Michael Boyd, an aviation consultant, said the massive task is too complicated to be accomplished so quickly.
"It's going to screw up the system," Boyd said. "Airlines will then cut back on flying to a level where they can screen baggage."
With so few dogs and machines, it is likely the airlines will rely heavily on a bag matching program in which luggage is removed from a plane if the passenger does not board. But that program is complicated: It can take 15 or 20 minutes to retrieve a bag and reload other luggage.
However, the airlines vow to do what's necessary to meet the deadline.
Said US Airways spokesman David Castelveter, "We expect very little effect on the customer's travel experience."
Fixing the holes
After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the government and the airlines tried to move quickly to fix the problems in aviation security.
Cockpit doors were strengthened, airport checkpoints were beefed up and pilots were directed not to negotiate with hijackers. But other problems remain.
Congress mandated more measures in an extraordinary bill that passed in November. The bill directs the federal government to take responsibility for all aviation security, which will lead to a new agency within the Department of Transportation employing about 28,000 people.
Congress recognized it would take months to create such a large agency, so the bill mandated several interim deadlines to ensure quick improvements.
The most ambitious goal -- and, some say, the most unrealistic -- was the Jan. 18 deadline for screening all checked bags.
Airlines have been screening less than 5 percent of those bags. But the law said the airlines must screen all with bomb-sniffing dogs, hand searches, explosive-detection machines or bag matching.
The law also gave the DOT leeway to allow the airlines to use other methods. That provision could be very important if the Jan. 18 deadline results in horrendous delays.
Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta last November said the government and the airlines probably would not meet the deadline, but he was promptly rebuffed by Congress and the White House. Since then, Mineta and DOT officials have promised the deadline would be met.
Last week, airline officials met with the DOT to negotiate the plan's details, which are crucial. A strict interpretation of the law could be costly and time-consuming for the airlines, so they have sought a compromise that might involve expanded searches for passengers who fit the security profile. The DOT has resisted, however, and is expected to announce details in about a week.
A superior nose
Despite advances in technology, a dog's nose is still the best way to find a bomb.
Experts say a well-trained dog can sniff traces of explosives that machines cannot detect. But the dogs can only work for a short time before they get tired or lose their desire to sniff.
Billie Vincent, former chief of security for the Federal Aviation Administration, said the dogs "are only good for 20 minutes or so and then you have to rest them. When they decide to quit working, they don't necessarily tell their handler."
There's also a tremendous shortage of the dogs. The FAA has about 190 dogs at about 40 airports around the country, but many more would be needed to scan checked bags on a large scale.
"Breeding Labradors and beagles is going to be a growth industry in this country," said Michael E. Levine, a Harvard law professor who formerly worked as an airline executive. "But you're talking about months or years before there are enough dogs to serve as substitutes for the machines."
To increase the dog supply, the FAA is being given five Labrador puppies by the Australian government. The FAA is using them and its own dogs for a breeding program.
Explosive-detection machines also have shortcomings. They don't get tired like dogs, but they are scarce and often slow.
Currently, bags screened by the machines are chosen at random or because the passengers match a higher-risk security profile. At the Tampa airport, passengers give their tickets and their bags and wait at the CTX machine while the bags are scanned. At the end of the process, their tickets are returned, but the bags, now considered sterile, are forwarded to the plane.
On a recent afternoon at TIA, airline employees, skycaps and security personnel loaded bags onto the machine as fast as they could, but passengers waited as long as 30 minutes to get their tickets back.
The government has deployed about 160 explosive detection machines such as the CTX and a similar model made by L-3 Communications in Clearwater. Now at least 2,000 more are needed to meet a separate Dec. 31 deadline for all checked luggage to be examined by a machine. But manufacturers say it will be at least a year before they can meet that demand. In addition, many airports must be reconfigured to provide room for the machines, which cover about the same space as a large pickup truck.
If TIA needs dozens of machines, it could mean a major redesign of the first two levels of the airport.
The largest explosive detection machines weigh 4 to 5 tons. Scattering 25 or 30 of them around the ticketing level of the Landside Terminal might require moving that function to the first level and moving bag claim to the second.
The Tampa airport was scheduled to have five such machines by the end of the year. But this month's delivery of a second one has been postponed until March or April. TIA officials fear this means the other three won't show up until next year.
Even if they all arrived on time, the five scanners wouldn't be enough to get the job done.
"The multimillion-dollar question is how many (explosive detection) machines you need here," said Rob Burr, the airport's director of operations. "We looked at the extremes, and if the requirement is to process each and every checked bag through one of these systems, that could mean we need 30 to 40 of them."
Ultimately, that decision will be made by the new federal Transportation Security Administration, which takes over from the airlines responsibility for all facets of airport passenger and baggage screening in mid-February.
Another type of explosive-detection machine now used for hand-held luggage might also be used for checked bags for this month's deadline. But the airlines do not have enough machines -- or enough trained workers -- to meet the need by Jan. 18.
The same is true for hand searches.
They can be effective for carry-on bags because weapons are easy to spot. But it would be costly and ineffective for the airlines to do that for checked bags.
"What are you going to hand search for? They don't call it plastic explosive for nothing," said Boyd, the consultant. "It could be disguised as a bar of Cashmere Bouquet, it could be inside an electric razor. What are they going to look for?"
Matching luggage
As a last resort to meet the deadline, airlines are embracing a technique they ridiculed for years: bag matching.
The idea is to prevent someone from checking a bag that contains a bomb without getting on the flight. To accomplish this, airline computers compare a list of passengers on board with a list of bags in the cargo hold. Any bag that doesn't match a passenger inside is pulled off the plane. (A few airlines might do it the opposite way -- waiting to load the bag until the passenger has boarded.)
Today, U.S. airlines bag-match on all international flights and for some luggage checked by domestic passengers identified in a computer profile as a potential threat.
Airlines have balked at bag matching on all flights. No one has ever bombed a domestic flight, they contended, and bag matching wouldn't stop terrorists bent on suicide such as the Sept. 11 hijackers.
Tens of thousands of bags move through the U.S. aviation system at any given time. Pulling bags off planes preparing to take off, especially at busy hubs, could cause huge delays and wreak havoc on flight schedules, the airlines said.
But with too few machines and bomb-sniffing dogs available, carriers say they will be forced to rely heavily on bag matching to meet the Jan. 18 deadline.
A study for the Federal Aviation Administration last year concluded that full domestic bag matching wouldn't be the logistical nightmare the airlines feared.
One in seven flights would depart late, with an average delay of seven minutes. It would cost airlines 40 cents for each passenger that boards a plane. And airlines wouldn't need to cut back flight schedules.
"Considering the inconveniences people now are accepting, bag matching is nothing," said Arnold Barnett, a professor of operational research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who worked on the study. "It's unobtrusive . . . and a relatively easy procedure, which the airlines grudgingly acknowledge."
Still, there are circumstances where bag matching could create havoc. The test was suspended when airlines had "irregular operations," such as a storm that forces carriers to cancel flights and rebook passengers.
Airlines are hoping federal officials will let them suspend bag matching during problems like the snowstorm last week that forced Delta Air Lines to cancel hundreds of flights at its Atlanta hub.
Carriers also want to bag-match passengers only on their originating flights, not later connections. For United Airlines, that would cut the number of bag matches in half at its busy hub at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, said spokesman Joe Hopkins.
"That takes a lot of pressure off the hub," he said.
Tiny Frontier Airlines began bag matching in mid-December. With only a single Denver hub and 29 planes, Frontier has it much easier than major airlines, said spokeswoman Elisa Eberwein.
But one day last weekend, only three of 110 departures were delayed because ramp workers had to remove bags of passengers who didn't get on board.
Frontier is still using explosive detection machines and other methods to screen checked bags, Eberwein says, but would have found it "real difficult" to meet the deadline without bag matching.
"There are just too few machines, too few people," she says. "I don't even know how you'd begin to staff enough people to hand-check every bag. Or whether you could find enough room." |
