CAA: GA News, "Administration Considers Ways to Cut Terror Risk From Small Planes"

["Stephen Irwin" <stepheni@xxxxxxxxx>]

Wednesday, January 9, 2002

Administration Considers Ways to Cut Terror Risk From Small Planes
By MATTHEW L. WALD and ELIZABETH BECKER
The New York (NY) Times  
 
 
WASHINGTON, - In response to last weekend's suicide crash by a teenage
pilot into a Florida skyscraper, the Office of Homeland Security has
been discussing more urgently ways to reduce the terrorism risk from
small planes. But officials are still groping for a way to control the
sprawling general aviation system.

The measures under consideration include banning flights made outside
the supervision of an air traffic controller, a change that would ban
most flights by small planes; increasing scrutiny of pilots, passengers
and aircraft at the airports that handle flights other than scheduled
airline and military flights; and putting more of the sky off-limits and
launching fighter planes to enforce the restriction. 

One official said the most far-reaching steps were the least likely to
be adopted.

But short of grounding most private planes, the government's air defense
system is unable to prevent another suicide flight like that of Charles
J. Bishop, 15 who crashed a plane into a Tampa, Fla., skyscraper last
weekend, according to aviation security experts.

The Federal Aviation Administration is incapable of monitoring the more
than half a million private pilots flying more than 200,000 airplanes
from 18,000 airports all over the country, much less stopping these
small planes from making attacks.

Since last weekend's crash, Tom Ridge, the director of homeland
security, has continued discussions with other government officials
begun after Sept. 11 on how to bring private airplanes under better
control. 

The government last month abandoned most of the restrictions imposed
after the terrorist attacks, when every airport in the country was
temporarily shut. Now only three small airports in the Washington area
remain closed. But the aviation administration has imposed several
changes, including closer coordination with the Department of Defense
and the imposition of temporary flight restrictions.

"No decisions have been made since this weekend's events on improving
aviation security, but every time an event like Tampa occurs we learn
more and include that information in our discussions," said Gordon
Johndroe, spokesman for the Homeland Security Office.

Aviation administration officials held a meeting on Monday with groups
representing private airplane pilots and owners to discuss some of the
measures being considered, Mr. Johndroe said.

"Until now there have been two options - pray it won't happen or ground
the whole fleet," said Stephen E. Flynn, a senior fellow at the Council
on Foreign Relations. "The serious challenge is to do a hard-nosed
assessment of what are the risks and what price we are willing to pay to
reduce the risks."

In a report to Congress last month, the aviation administration warned
that "given the ubiquity of general aviation aircraft and airports, such
aircraft are never far from major urban centers, critical infrastructure
and other targets." A more detailed, classified report to be given to
Congress, should be finished in about a month, according to officials.
They would provide no details about its contents.

The plane that hit the Bank of America tower in Tampa on Saturday was in
the air for a short time, far too little time for the air defense system
to react. 

Indeed, one certainty is that the answer will not rely on a large
military presence in the skies. Defense officials say they have already
stretched their resources to fly round-the-clock patrols over New York
and Washington as well as irregular missions over other metropolitan
areas.

"We're going to remain the last resort after every option has failed,"
said Maj. Barry Venable of the North American Aerospace Defense Command.
"We weren't built for this mission."

Arguing against new restrictions are the people who own and fly private
aircraft. Through their private pilots' association, they have been
lobbying against any new restrictions on their freedom to fly in the
United States. They point out that a temporary ban on flights within 10
miles of nuclear plants shut down nearly 50 general aviation airports
nationwide.

Before Sept. 11, there was little concern about unauthorized use of
private airplanes. Last year, of the 226,000 private aircraft in the
United States 15 were stolen. 

Most of those thefts were by drug smugglers, said Warren Morningstar, a
spokesman for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, a lobbying
group. "They go south, get loaded up, come back and are abandoned," Mr.
Morningstar said.

Since the terrorist attacks, security has tightened at general aviation
terminals housed at airports that also serve airlines. For the first
time, many of these terminals are requiring ground personnel to wear
identification badges and pilots to be escorted to their aircraft. 

For their part, private companies renting aircraft or teaching flying
have been doing more thorough background checks. 

But the biggest problem is keeping track of all of the private planes in
the sky. Requiring all private planes to file under the direction of air
traffic controllers would be one way to address that problem. But
experts said that would overwhelm the air traffic control system.

The aviation administration's air traffic controllers track fewer than
half the planes in flight, and technology does not allow them to track
many more. 

Nearly all the planes that are tracked, including all scheduled
airliners, fly under instrument flight rules that require the planes to
broadcast an identity number over their radios. 

But that system is overburdened. The ID number, called a beacon code,
consists of four digits and uses only the numbers 0 through 7. That
means there is a theoretical maximum of only 2,401 numbers for the
planes. In fact, there are fewer, because some are reserved for special
purposes. 

On a typical weekday, there are 5,000 planes in the sky under instrument
flight rules. The aviation administration uses some of the
identification numbers twice for flights in widely different geographic
areas.

An even larger number of airplanes, no one is sure how many, fly under
visual flight rules. That means they can mostly fly without individual
identification numbers and are not required to file flight plans.

If the government decided to require airplanes to fly under instrument
rules, that would overwhelm the aviation administration, experts said.

Many private pilots are not trained for this, and their planes do not
carry the necessary equipment.

Some pilots flying under visual rules may file flight plans, but they
are little more than records of origins and intended destinations.

All the proposed changes, however, would fail to deter a suicidal pilot,
according to Mr. Morningstar, who pointed to lapses by the Air Force and
commercial airline companies in detecting suicidal pilots.

On April 2, 1997, a 32-year-old Air Force captain flying an A-10
Thunderbolt on a training mission in Arizona broke away from his three-
plane formation and flew 800 miles before crashing into a mountainside
in Colorado; a subsequent investigation said that was suicide. On Oct.
31, 1999, a relief co-pilot for EgyptAir put a Boeing 767 into a dive
into the Altantic that killed all 217 people on board; American
investigators said that was a suicide.

Mr. Morningstar said that there were about 19 suicides in the last 20
years in general aviation planes.


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