"Airport security: Return of common sense"

Tuesday, December 10, 2002

Opinion
Return of common sense 
The Cincinatti (OH) Post


Finally, some common sense is returning to the nation's airports. 

The Transportation Security Administration has announced that it will
lighten up on those despised "random" security checks at each boarding
gate that saw elderly women, the wheelchair-bound and small children
pulled aside for humiliating searches. 

Instead of searches at each gate, mobile teams of federal screeners will
now randomly select gates for searches, meaning most passengers, who
have already passed through security once, will be able to board their
flights unmolested. 

Transportation Security Administration chief James Loy branded those
searches a "stupid rule." 

Loy should also be congratulated for doing away with the rote Q-and-A
about one's baggage at the check-in counter. 

In another welcome move, the Transportation Security Administration will
lift a ban on parking within 100 yards of the terminal, a prohibition
that was both inconvenient to the public and costly to the airports
because it put the choicest parking spaces off-limits. The ban would be
reimposed only in response to increased threats, which makes sense. 

No one opposes sensible security precautions, but for a while there it
looked like the federal government was going out of its way to hassle
passengers simply for the sake of hassle. These latest measures are a
welcome change of course. 

Now the Transportation Security Administration ought to rethink its ban
on friends and family seeing off their loved ones or welcoming them home
at the gates. 

If any of this sounds trite, consider what happened on Monday. United
Airlines filed for bankruptcy. It is the largest bankruptcy in aviation
history and one of the 10 largest ever. In the last two years, the
airline lost $3.8 billion and it is on track to lose $2.5 billion this
year. Nor is United alone. US Airways is already in bankruptcy, and
American, the world's largest airline, has asked its employees to forgo
their pay increases next year. 

Certainly, there is far more at work in the airline industry than post
9/11 jitters or increased security costs. Still, the public's aversion
to flying since that awful day cannot be discounted. Travelers want
better security, yes, but the means employed to achieve it must be
sensible.


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