Air Travel

By Bill Saporito

They were asking the same stupid questions on Sept. 11, when the hijackers boarded the planes: Did you pack your own bags? Did anyone give you anything to take on the plane? The answers were a uniform, "No," the very same ones the rest of us give. No. As in, "No, our nation's airline security system doesn't work."

But we knew that. We knew it in 1997 when the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security (the Gore Commission) said so, and advised that aviation security should be a national issue and funded accordingly, not left to the low-cost efforts of highly competitive airlines. "Everyone knew the system was broken," says Jim McKenna, former director of the Aviation Safety Alliance. "But no one or nothing could force a change. The combination of four aircraft hijacked and destroyed, with thousands killed, may be enough to force that change."

The changes are already under way, and you may have noticed some of them in that long, long wait to clear security on your last flight. For passengers: a ban on carrying any sharp instruments; government-issued identification needed to board; only ticketed travelers past security; and restricted parking near terminals. For the airlines: tightened cockpit access; a requirement that each aircraft be searched at least once a day; and increased screening procedures and technology at security checkpoints. As of Jan. 18, airlines will be required to inspect every bag on domestic flights for explosives, as they now do for foreign flights. (Even that scrutiny won't catch everything, as was shown Saturday when a man aboard an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami, apparently with explosives in his shoes, was subdued by crew members and passengers after he tried to ignite the explosives with a match.)

The airlines actually tried to delay the implementation of the bag check, but they are no longer in charge of security, are they? That was perhaps the most critical realization--that a secure system can derive only from a national organization designed to do just that. "It didn't get the attention it is getting today, and probably wouldn't be getting the attention now if 9/11 didn't happen," said John Magaw, who has been nominated to run the new Transportation Security Administration.

The TSA is a branch of the Transportation Department and separate from the Federal Aviation Administration. It will assume all existing contracts between airlines and private security firms by mid-February. Within a year, the government will supplant the private screeners with newly trained federal workers, who must be U.S. citizens. (Many of the private screeners will qualify for federal jobs and will be retrained.) Magaw will also hire a security czar for each of the country's 429 major airports. "There was a lack of focus," he said. "There's no lack of focus now."

That focus includes the coordination of intelligence gathering, long considered a weak spot. Remember, two of the hijackers were on the CIA's watch list, but the information never got to the airlines. According to FAA Administrator Jane Garvey, the CIA and FBI and the FAA and airlines are now moving to share what they know--or at least they say they are.

And if the intelligence fails, as it did spectacularly in September, we know that it's smart to have cops in the sky as well as on the ground. That's why 10,000 air marshals are being hired to ride shotgun on domestic flights. There were only 37 marshals on duty on Sept. 11. Most of them were assigned to international flights.

Three decades ago flying was considered the pleasant privilege of those who could afford it. Then, with the onset of deregulation, it devolved into an endurance contest. Flying may yet become a privilege again, but for an entirely different reason. Americans might be forced to trade some privacy to fly. "For aviation, it is imperative that we focus more thoroughly on individual people as potential security threats and not just on things like carry-ons and checked baggage," says Carol Hallett, head of the Air Transport Association, the industry's trade group.

That means smoking out the bad guys before they reach the planes. To the airlines, this suggests using newly trained screeners to conduct criminal profiling. But profiling is still a hot button, even with an Administration that has asked for--and received--increased investigative power. "Absolutely not," Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta recently told 60 Minutes. Terrorism experts say profiling is absolutely necessary, but Mineta, who as a child was interned in a wartime camp for Japanese Americans, won't budge.

Improved security will also require the use of technology to verify passenger identities and control access. Garvey says a smart-card program is one of the options that should be considered, on the assumption that knowing exactly who is getting on the plane is crucial. "We have to figure out where best to focus our security resources," she says.

Will people willingly give up personal information to move more quickly and safely through the air traffic system? Some frequent flyers already do. U.S. airlines such as Delta and American are subtly providing speed lanes with separate security lines for well-known premium passengers. Some 2,000 U.S. and British citizens who fly British Atlantic and Virgin Airways between America and Britain will be able to pass through immigration without stopping. They have provided personal and employment information and signed on to an iris-recognition database. Iris recognition, which will go into operation mid-January at London's Heathrow, is a technology that essentially relies on the unique patterns of a person's iris like a fingerprint.

As the big airlines hemorrhaged money and talked about the need to get even bigger, the small airlines discovered the safety issue. Within days of the disaster, Jonathan Ornstein, the CEO of Mesa Airlines, a commuter carrier based in Phoenix, announced that he was hiring his own corps of unarmed security personnel. Given their tiny fleets, enthusiastic employees and more nimble management, outfits such as JetBlue Airways and Frontier Airlines redesigned and reinforced cockpit doors within two weeks. The big carriers will need months, at a minimum. "Past practice has been to wait and see what others will do," explains Thomas Nunn, Frontier's director of safety. "This was no time to wait." Both JetBlue and Frontier are also making plans to install cameras to monitor the passenger cabin from the cockpit.

And the public has responded. JetBlue, Frontier, AirTran and that big small airline, Southwest, are flying full planes and making money. Clearly, consumers will pay for a sense of security.

Airlines always point out that flying is the safest means of transport. And the reason is that the airlines and the government have created a culture of safety that puts everything else (like comfort) second; a system of inspection, mechanical redundancies and training builds concentric rings of safety around a tube of metal filled with humans. Says McKenna: "We've created a system in which everyone involved with a flight understands that he or she is responsible for the safe conduct of that flight, and most people take that responsibility seriously. If we can do that with security, American passengers will be very secure." If we don't, we now know what we can expect.

--By Bill Saporito. Reported by Sally B. Donnelly/Washington

With reporting by Sally B. Donnelly/Washington