Airline Security Got You Down? Talk To The Pilots

By SALLY B. DONNELLY

Michigan congressman John Dingell, who was forced by security to drop his pants at Washington's Reagan National Airport a week ago, grumbled to the Detroit News that screeners "felt me up and down like a prize steer." He later insisted he didn't "want any special treatment" when Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta called to express his sympathy. Some other victims of newly vigilant airport-security personnel are getting much worse handling. The airlines' own uniformed flight crews are often searched several times in a single day, and the pilots are getting so fed up that they have begun talking openly of striking or staging a work slowdown like the one that helped make the summer of 2000 the most delayed in history. Stephen Luckey, head of the Air Line Pilots Association's national security committee, says he gets dozens of calls a day from pilots who have been stopped by security and, in many cases, subjected to more aggressive searches than ordinary passengers. An airline captain told TIME that while in uniform and on his way to a flight, he had to remove articles of clothing, and once he even had the lining pulled out of his suitcase. "Pilots can't complain or object because our airlines will discipline us or even fire us," he said. "As a pilot, the public trusts my skills, character and judgment to keep them safe, but it's becoming an ordeal even to get to the plane." Airport security most likely will only get tougher. To meet the deadline set by Congress late last year, Mineta will announce this week that starting Jan. 18, for the first time in history, U.S. airlines will search every bag put on a domestic aircraft or match it with its owner.

--By Sally B. Donnelly