"CVG now screening all cargo"

Monday, April 2, 2007

CVG now screening all cargo 
By Kerry Duke
The Cincinnati (OH) Post

 
A pilot program of the Department of Homeland Security at
Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport is giving close scrutiny
to cargo placed aboard passenger aircraft - a move some air safety critics
say is long overdue.

"At this airport right now, all cargo is being screened," said Paul
Wisniewski, federal security director at the Hebron complex for the
Transportation Security Administration, which handles screening at the
nation's airports for homeland security.

"That's not the case around the country. That's not the case at all."

Instead, most cargo comes aboard aircraft under the TSA's Known Shipper
program, which sets up regulations and vetting for shipping companies such
as DHL and Federal Express and requires them to inspect cargo. The cargo
might also undergo additional screening at airports - but it might not.

Democrats, who now control Congress, want that changed. Led by Rep. Edward
Markey, D-Mass, who calls the cargo holds "a backdoor way onto planes," they
are clamoring for all cargo on passenger planes to be inspected for bombs. A
bill to require that is pending.

New cargo screening under the pilot program at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky
International - one of three such pilot programs nationwide - will go a long
way toward gauging how feasible and how costly it might be to expand cargo
screening to all airports, Wisniewski said..

"What's it going to take if we screen everything that goes on a passenger
airplane? That's the purpose of the three pilots," said Wisniewski, whose
TSA agents screen about 24 tons of cargo - everything from mail and printed
materials to car parts and medical supplies - each day at
Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International.

One pilot program at San Francisco International Airport is examining how
effective cargo screening is when it's handled in a central location, he
said. Another, in Seattle, is geared toward all-cargo operations, such as
DHL and FedEx, and is focusing on preventing people from stowing away and
then seizing an aircraft.

"And then there was what do you do about all the other airports in the
country where it doesn't make sense to have a central location? And that's
us," said Wisniewski.

"We were picked because we're kind of a moderate-sized cargo operation.
We're not super big and we're not tiny by any stretch of the imagination,"
said Wisniewski, who has assigned about 100 of his 300 agents to handle
luggage and cargo screening. "We're an average airport, an average,
good-sized airport."

At the airport, cargo is being screened by a combination of methods, such as
with explosive trace detection equipment and bomb-sniffing dogs that are
used in luggage areas, he said.

Within 30 to 40 days, Wisniewski said, the TSA plans to use new cutting-edge
technology in an addition to the Delta Air Lines cargo facility that his
agency will build.

"The phase of the experiment now is involving the Explosive Detection
Systems, that CAT scan-type technology," Wisniewski said.

That equipment is able to scan large cargo boxes by using computers that
generate a three-dimensional image from x-ray pictures. Its use at
Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International was announced last week

Data from the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International pilot program,
which started in September, is being collected and analyzed by the Oakridge
National Laboratory, which will issue a final report to homeland security,
Wisniewski said. The pilot program is supposed to run a year, but because
the CAT scan technology isn't coming on line until later than anticipated,
it likely will be extended, he said.

"Part of the experiment is to see how efficient it is. Can the baggage
screening equipment do the same thing for cargo as it does for bags? How
much will it cost? What's it going to take to do this? How much time does it
take and does that interfere with the operation?" Wisniewski said.

Answers to those questions are important to Congress, but also to airlines
that don't want cargo operations to be impeded or made more costly. Air
cargo generates about $4.7 billion in annual revenues for U.S. passenger
airlines and $21.1 billion for all-cargo airlines, according to the
Department of Transportation, and accounts for more than 100,000 jobs.

Bottom line, the intent of the $30 million pilot program is to ensure safer
skies, which, according to Wisniewski, is already happening due to the
stepped-up screening at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International.

"It gives it the same scrutiny that passenger baggage is getting," he said.

 Do you have an opinion about this story?
Share it with other readers in our CAA Discussion Forums

http://www.californiaaviation.org/dcfp/dcboard.php


*****************************************