Baggage Inspections at Yeager Airport a Search in Progress

February 22, 2004  

Baggage Inspections at Yeager Airport a Search in
Progress
Charleston Sunday Gazette Mail, WV

When U.S. Transportation and Security Administration
employees operate Yeager Airport’s baggage-screening
machine, their eyes are searching for oddities.

Cans of baked beans and jars of peanut butter
sometimes set off the machine because they are similar
in density to explosives. Certain shoe soles also can
trip the alarm.

During a recent scan, the machine alerted a screener
to a suspicious, dense item packed in a black duffel
bag. After further inspection, the item the machine
thought could be an explosive device was the contents
of a tightly packed toiletries case.

“We examine everything we find suspicious,” said the
TSA’s federal security director, Nick Bruich. 

Most of the time, the screeners determine that the 600
bags they screen daily in the airport’s basement don’t
contain items prohibited on flights. Often, a jar of
peanut butter is just a jar of peanut butter.

TSA employees started screening passengers in August
2002, and they added baggage three months later.
Bruich said that since he arrived at Yeager in
November 2002, no explosives have been found in
checked bags. Lighter fluid is the most common
hazardous material screeners find. Bruich said the
only time a screener has found a loaded gun in a
checked bag was Feb. 14, when a loaded small-caliber
handgun was found in the bag of former House of
Delegates member Mark Hunt.

Screening has improved since the TSA took over at
Yeager, said airport director Rick Atkinson. Before
the TSA, the airlines paid Globe Security, a private
company, to screen Yeager passengers. About 14 people
worked for Globe at Yeager, compared to about 47
TSA-employed screeners.

Globe employees screened travelers passing through a
security checkpoint; they did not check bags, Atkinson
said. The closest thing to baggage screening was
during check-in, when airline employees would ask
passengers if they packed their own bags and if the
bags had been out of their possession.

“There was no effective baggage screening done before
TSA took it over,” Atkinson said. 

Now, all bags on commercial flights are screened at
least once between the time passengers check their
luggage in at the airline’s ticket counter to when
loaders hoist the bags into the plane’s belly. Bags
travel by conveyor belt from the check-in counter to a
chute that spits them out downstairs. Screeners load
all the bags on the scanner and watch two screens for
signs of anything out of the ordinary. 

If something sets off an alarm, or the screeners see
something suspicious on the screen, they tell their
supervisor, who then gives specific directions to
another screener about where the problem item is
located in the bag. Screeners take these bags to
another inspection area, where they are tested for
explosives and then searched by hand. If screeners
find explosives or loaded or undeclared firearms, they
call airport police.

The TSA received a high-tech scanner in January. It
shows the baggage in a layered image, rather than the
old machine’s two-dimensional, X-ray-style image. The
old scanner didn’t show as well as a picture, which
required TSA employees to conduct more visual
searches, Bruich said.

Screeners also search bags randomly. The TSA
recommends that passengers do not lock their bags,
because they can all be searched. The screeners use
master keys to open bags, and when they don’t have a
key, they’ll cut the lock.

“If you don’t want people to see something personal,
don’t pack it,” Bruich said. 

The TSA received new screening equipment for its
walk-through checkpoint when it took over Yeager’s
security in 2002. 

“We had first-generation X-ray machines owned by US
Air[ways],” Atkinson said. He estimated that the
equipment was about 15 years old. “The new equipment
doesn’t give as many false positives, and detects
stuff better.” 

The new equipment also speeds up the scanning process.
In the past, if an electric razor looked like a stun
gun, a screener would have to pull the passenger out
of line and hand- search the bag, Atkinson said.

Bruich said most confiscated items are prohibited on
airplanes, but are not criminal in nature. Sharp
objects such as scissors and short-bladed knives make
up about 70 percent of the items screeners confiscated
from passengers at the walk-through checkpoint since
the beginning of the year.

Only 4 percent of the items screeners find at the
checkpoint are what the TSA deems deadly or too
dangerous to carry on a plane, such as guns,
explosives, box cutters and long-bladed knives.

Bruich said earlier TSA data regarding confiscated
items at the walk-through checkpoint wasn’t readily
accessible because of a glitch in the reporting
system.

According to stories appearing in Charleston
newspapers, the FBI arrested an Orlando, Fla., man in
November 2003 after he tried to board a US Airways
flight from Charleston to Charlotte, N.C., with a BB
pistol in his carry-on bag.

Bruich questions why anyone would still pack a box
cutter in their carry-on luggage, especially after
Sept. 11, 2001.

“Sometimes you wonder, ‘What are people thinking?’”

 

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