Travel security flaws – and how to fix them

Christopher Elliott Travel columnist • Profile • E-mail

Bogus bomb scares. Porous airport security. Whistle-blowing air traffic controllers.

It sounds like the plot of straight-to-DVD disaster movie — or, on second thought, maybe the premise of a new British TV comedy — but sadly, it is neither. They’re actual events, and they happened last week here in the United States.

In fact, the last week of July 2007 was as close to a textbook example of what’s wrong with security in air travel as it comes. But each event also offers a lesson or two about what needs to be done to fix the problem.

Is all this security just for show?
You couldn’t help but wonder after a Phoenix TV station showed footage of employees at Sky Harbor International Airport walking into secure areas without being searched and given only a cursory identification check. It reminded me of an incident this spring, when 13 handguns, an M-16 type automatic weapon and several pounds of marijuana were smuggled on a Delta Air Lines flight at Orlando International Airport by two men who avoided checkpoints because they were employees. The Transportation Security Administration promised to tighten security in Phoenix. But a good place to start might be to make sure the bad guys can’t get their hands on a TSA uniform, which, according to one report, was readily available from a Salvation Army thrift store.

Of course the TSA shouldn’t be waving gunrunners and drug couriers through its checkpoints. Even the ones wearing uniforms. But passengers need to manage their expectations, too. As a matter of fact, the security is for show. We can’t afford an impenetrable, El-Al-style security screening system. It’s time to stop thinking of the checkpoints, the uniforms, the magnetometers and the long lines as the last line of defense terrorist hijackers — and more as part psychological deterrent, part safety blanket for nervous airline passengers. A few resolute criminals will get through, no matter how well the TSA does its job.

That video game really bombed
Just to show everyone how serious they were about screening everything that came through its checkpoints, the TSA intercepted a “suspicious item” later in the week at Long Beach Airport. Several hundred people were evacuated from the terminal for more than an hour and five arriving aircraft were held until they determined the device was a handheld video game device.

TSA screeners catch things they shouldn’t and don’t catch things they should. Earlier this month in Albany, N.Y., federal inspectors tried to bring bottles of water and a fake bomb through a checkpoint. The water bottles were confiscated; the bomb sailed through.

I guess when your boss, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, is telling everyone he has a “gut feeling” that we’ll be attacked soon, you take anything that looks remotely dangerous, and perhaps a few things that don’t, and then ask questions later. Maybe the secretary should keep his feelings to himself.

Yes, the skies are unsafe ... sorta
In congressional testimony last week, air traffic controllers warned that poor working conditions could endanger the flying public. Among their gripes: their equipment is old, their facilities are dilapidated, and working conditions are awful. Defining the problem seems easy. A solution isn’t. Some are calling for more money to repair aging equipment, even though an upgrade to a $15 billion satellite-based system, called NextGen, is in the works. (There’s more in my column on the future of airports that appeared last week.)

Others say consolidation of obsolete facilities is the answer. It might be nice if the $3 billion Congress authorized for FAA facilities and equipment actually went to the agency, instead of the $2.5 billion the Bush administration requested.

One thing seems certain: The discussion of air traffic safety isn’t even a blip on passengers’ radars, and it will remain absent from them until planes start falling out of the sky. The first half of 2007 was the safest in aviation history, according to a report by Flightglobal.com. The problem will have to get worse — much worse — before it gets better.

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