Screening of All Checked Bags Is to Start Today
January 18, 2002
The New York Times
By MATTHEW L. WALD
W ASHINGTON, Jan. 17 - As the
airlines prepared to start baggage
procedures to reduce the risk of bombing,
experts predicted only modest
improvements in security, and hoped for
only modest schedule disruptions.
Airline officials were nervously optimistic
today that they could operate on Friday
without major delays, as they began,
under a deadline imposed by Congress,
some form of baggage screening for every
piece of checked luggage.
Mostly they will check that on the first flight of each passenger's trip no bag is loaded
into a cargo hold without its owner being on board. They may also clear a bag by having
a dog sniff it or by running it through a machine that detects explosives or by searching
it by hand.
Aviation experts say that the baggage rule and other steps taken since Sept. 11 have
improved security but that holes remain.
"A good security system is a multilayered, interdependent system," said Billie H.
Vincent, who was chief of security at the Federal Aviation Administration in the late
1980's. "None of the layers are expected to be 100 percent effective, but taken in the
aggregate, they have a better chance of 100 percent effectiveness." But Mr. Vincent
said that even all of the measures now planned would fall short and some deadlines
would probably be missed.
In fact, some deadlines that are ostensibly being met on
Friday will be missed in certain aspects. Bags, for example,
will be matched only at the point of departure, leaving open
the possibility that a terrorist could buy a ticket that
required a change of planes, board the first leg and skip the
second, letting the suitcase and bomb go without the
terrorist.
It does nothing to block suicide bombers, a point noted by
many people who fly, including Secretary of Transportation
Norman Y. Mineta.
In another case of a deadline not quite met, a guidance
document due on Friday from the aviation agency on how
airlines should train pilots and flight attendants for coping
with security threats will be delivered. But it is missing a
crucial component, a report on the feasibility of carrying guns
or nonlethal weapons.
Congress set Friday, the 60th day after the new aviation
security law was signed, as the deadline for some form of
baggage screening, and the Transportation Department has
responded by picking a course that is incomplete but probably
achievable, and declaring it has complied. Senator John D.
Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who is chairman
of an aviation subcommittee, said he would hold a hearing
next week on whether the limited bag matching met the intent of the new law.
Mr. Vincent estimated that 90 percent of the screening would consist of the partial bag
matching. Dogs, he and others said, can detect tiny amounts of explosives, but they
tire quickly or get bored and do not always tell their handlers when they have quit
work. Hand searching is too slow to keep up with the flow of bags. The explosive
detection machines can cost more than $1 million each, sometimes cannot be installed
without rebuilding part of the airport and, because they are cumbersome to use,
sometimes sit idle.
Speaking about the requirement that bags be matched with passengers before the first
takeoff of a trip, Carol B. Hallett, the chief executive of the Air Transport Association,
said, "We are hopeful there really will not be any change from what has been in
existence over the last couple of months."
But in the next breath Ms. Hallett said, "There have been days when it's been pretty
horrific because of security breaches."
In the past, her organization had lobbied against bag matching, and airlines argued
that it would cause delays at their hubs. The airlines appear to have won the
argument, in the sense that matching bags will not be required on connections.
American Airlines, the nation's largest, said it "anticipates efficiently processing
passengers through security and launching flights on time." American said it began
100 percent bag matching on Tuesday.
The system's capacity to tolerate disruption has increased somewhat because the skies
are less crowded. The Air Transport Association said today that the number of
passengers boarding planes in December was 14.2 percent lower than in December
2000.
Other security improvements are taking hold; the number of armed undercover air
marshals in place is small, but growing, and all major airlines have installed doors
that are harder to break down. The next step, already taken by some airlines, is doors
that are impenetrable to bullets and bombs.
Airlines now have 60 days to propose a training program to the Transportation
Department. The details are secret, but Jane F. Garvey, the head of the aviation
administration, said, "This really shifts the strategy from a training program that has
been much more passive to one that is much more active."
The plan does not tell the airlines whether to issue stun guns or other nonlethal
weapons, or whether to train pilots to maneuver their airplanes to make hijackers fall
over, but it does lay out what kinds of training crews would need if those strategies
were adopted.
Suit Challenges Screeners Rule
LOS ANGELES, (AP) Jan. 17 - The American Civil Liberties union filed a federal
lawsuit today challenging the constitutionality of a provision in the new airport
security law that requires all baggage screeners to be American citizens.
The suit claims that the law discriminates against noncitizens, who represent more
than half the screeners at some California airports.
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