"Air travel: Safer, but at what cost?"

Sunday, September 10, 2006

Air travel: Safer, but at what cost?
By Mark Houser
The Pittsburgh (PA) Tribune-Review


Every time he goes to the airport, David C. Nelson has to prove he is not a
terrorist. 

But an extra 10 minutes of questioning at the ticket counter is a necessary
price to pay in the post-9/11 age, said Nelson, 68, of Harrisburg. 

Nelson, a retired auditor for a national shoe store chain, shares a name
with someone on the government's "no-fly list". Airlines use the list to
screen potential terrorists. 

So Nelson is accustomed to a bit more inconvenience than the shoe removal
and other annoyances most air travelers now endure in the name of security.
Nelson said he is reassured that "someone is at least looking at what's
going on out there." 

"I do not mind it at all. Anyone who does is an idiot," he said. 

Five years after al-Qaida's shocking transformation of four passenger jets
into kamikaze fuel bombs, airline security remains a major focus of the
counter-terrorism struggle. 

British authorities last month announced they had foiled a plot to blow up
as many as 10 transatlantic flights, demonstrating that terrorists still
consider air travel a potent means of mass destruction. 

The U.S. government has spent more than $20 million to make airplanes safe
from terrorists since the 2001 attacks. 

Cockpit doors now are bulletproof. Hundreds of armed air marshals covertly
patrol select flights, and pilots who wish to carry guns are trained to
shoot would-be suicide pilots. 

Most of the federal spending has gone to creating and staffing the
Transportation Security Administration, with 43,000 employees screening bags
and passengers at U.S. airports. 

But with each new security measure come questions about what remains
vulnerable. That leads to a necessary, but grim, cost-benefit analysis. 

Sometimes the cost is mere inconvenience. Passengers remove their shoes for
X-ray scans to detect bombs concealed in the soles. Now fliers can't bring
liquids into the cabin, a ban triggered by the London plot. 

But other weak points require solutions that are far costlier. Pallets of
air cargo are too big to run through X-rays, so only a fraction now are
examined by bomb-sniffing dogs. Airliners have no defense against a
shoulder-fired missile, but counter-measures could cost $1 million per
plane. 

Pittsburgh International Airport is one of the first to be outfitted with an
"in-line" baggage screening system, which brings checked luggage through
X-rays by conveyor belt rather than requiring passengers to carry them to a
separate station after checking in. 

The system, which now handles all non-US Airways passengers, cost nearly $17
million to install. The federal government paid two-thirds of the cost; the
Allegheny County Airport Authority, the rest. Another system for US Airways
passengers will cost $18 million, said authority spokeswoman JoAnn Jenny. 

Critics wonder if Americans are getting their money's worth. 

The former watchdog of the Homeland Security Department, Clark Ervin,
criticizes air travel security gaps in his new book, "Open Target." 

Ervin, who was inspector general of the department until 2004, said he is
most troubled that undercover inspectors still consistently manage to sneak
bomb-making materials past airport screeners. Federal agents carrying
bomb-making materials cleared checkpoints at 21 airports in late 2005 and
early 2006. 

"What's particularly troubling about this is, we've spent more money
protecting the aviation sector than anywhere else, since that's the way we
were attacked on 9/11," Ervin said. 

"Yet, despite the extraordinary expenditure of money... screeners are still
unable to detect these weapons," he said. 

The Transportation Security Administration's budget for the fiscal year
ending this month was $4.6 billion, said spokesman Darrin Kayser. 

Forty-two percent of aviation security spending comes from passenger ticket
fees and direct payments by the airlines, Kayser said. 

The airline industry, which suffered a financial pummelling after 9/11,
argues that security costs should not be its responsibility. 

"We think all costs associated with protecting the traveling public should
be borne by the government," said David Castelveter, spokesman for the Air
Transport Association. "Why are the airlines being targeted as the only
means of mass transportation being hit with these kinds of costs?" 

"My experience is, an airline executive would sell his soul and his mother's
and his firstborn's in order to advance his airline's profit status," said
Billie Vincent, an air security consultant and former director of aviation
security for the Federal Aviation Administration. 

A June report from the inspector general of the Department of Homeland
Security claimed airlines neglected to pay $49 million in security fees from
2002 to 2005. 

The accused London conspirators reportedly would not be the first to plan a
9/11 reprise. 

In February, President Bush revealed details about a 2002 plot to crash a
plane into a Los Angeles skyscraper. 

Four members of an Indonesian Islamist group, Jemaah Islamiya, planned to
blow open the cockpit door with shoe bombs and take over the plane,
according to the White House. The men involved were not named, but were said
to be in secret custody. 

Skyscrapers in the United States, London, Italy and Australia were said to
be targets in nine hijack plots foiled since 9/11, according to a classified
government report leaked this summer. 

Ervin acknowledged that much progress has been made in air security since
2001, but said it is not enough. 

"Are we somewhat safer? Sure," he said. 

"Are we as safe as we can be, are we as safe as we should be, are we as safe
as we think we are? No, we're not."

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