What cost air safety?

Flight attendants demand that flying be made safer, through measures like screening all bags -- but the airlines are resisting.

By Jake Tapper

Oct 8, 2001 | Because of airport security loopholes, a terrorist today could still check a suitcase bomb at the ticket counter, representatives from the major flight attendants' union have been telling members of Congress in recent days. Plus, they charge, the recommendations by the Department of Transportation's rapid-response task force on airport security released late Friday, as well as the airport security measures advocated in the Senate by Sens. Ernest Hollings, D-S.D., and John McCain, R-Ariz., leave these and other gaping loopholes wide open.

The stakes in this battle rose even higher on Sunday, when the U.S. retaliated for the Sept. 11 terror attacks by bombing multiple sites in Afghanistan. Experts have warned that U.S. reprisals could lead to new strikes by those allied with main terror suspect Osama bin Laden, and worries about airline safety could continue to grow in the weeks and months to come.

And if the airline industry has anything to say about it, these loopholes will remain. Regardless of the $15 billion airline industry bailout package that became law on Sept. 22, the powerful Air Transport Association, which represents the major airlines, says that such security measures are both cost-prohibitive and unnecessary. The ATA promises to fight the flight attendants' proposals tooth and nail.

And based on the Senate legislation, as well as the transportation task force's recommendations, it looks as though the airlines will win. After all, the airlines have a history of such "victories." As the Los Angeles Times detailed on Saturday, many recommendations issued by the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security, formed after the 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800, went unheeded and were vociferously opposed by the airline industry.

This won't be the first time the Association of Flight Attendants has sought a more vigorous screening of all baggage, including luggage checked at the ticket counter and stored in the cargo bin. Currently, only a small percentage of checked baggage is inspected, and even then it is often only X-rayed. In addition to having every bag X-rayed, flight attendants want all baggage to go through the high-tech explosive detection system that passengers may have occasionally faced with their carry-on bags, which are swabbed and tested for explosive materials. Airports that don't have that technology should require the hand inspection of all baggage, the flight attendants' union says.

The flight attendants are also seeking security measures to ensure that each piece of baggage in the cargo bin of a plane matches up to a passenger on that plane, and to keep food and beverage carts in secure locations in airports.

Michael Wascom, spokesman for the American Transport Association, which represents the major airlines, says that the flight attendants' suggestions would present "a logistical nightmare."

"That particular program wouldn't have had any impact on stopping these terrorists," Wascom says. The airlines instead favor greater screening of passengers, including having the Justice Department alert the airlines about individuals on the FBI's "watch lists" -- a list that two of the 19 terrorists were on. "Instead of just focusing on bags, we're focusing on people," Wascom says. But this approach seems to pay no heed to the fact that most of the Sept. 11 terrorists were unknown to the U.S. intelligence community -- or that four of the terrorists' identities are still unclear and may never be conclusively determined, according to a Saturday report in the Washington Post. The main reason why the U.S. is still at a state of readiness, if not panic, is because of all the unknown Islamic extremists within its borders.

On Thursday, the president of the Association of Flight Attendants, Patricia Friend, met with Democratic leaders of the House Transportation Committee to try to rectify what her organization considers major security loopholes. Friend met with Rep. Jim Oberstar, D-Minn., and Rep. William Lipinski, R-Ill., the ranking party members on the aviation subcommittee, and is working to schedule meetings with their GOP counterparts.

A House Transportation Committee source says that it's "hard to say" whether these recommendations will make it into the House airport security legislation, which is slowly being negotiated on the staff level. Negotiations between Oberstar and Lipinski with Republicans on the committee, led by the chairman, Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, reached an impasse on Tuesday over the issue of whether baggage and passenger screeners at airports should become federal employees, a move that Democrats and some moderate Republicans favor.

The flight attendants' union supports the federalization move. But largely lost amid that debate -- which has held up debate over the Hollings-McCain bill in the Senate -- are the flight attendants' fears of potential security breeches that few government agencies seem to be taking seriously. These dynamics are nothing new; too often the concerns of the flight attendants are treated by Congress with a disdain similar to that shown by Rep. Gary Condit, D-Calif., to Anne Marie Smith.

Dawn Deeks, a spokeswoman for the flight attendants' union, says that most people she talks to are under the mistaken impression that the airlines already inspect checked luggage. "The public perceives a level of safety out there that's just not there," Deeks says. "They think things are being done right now because everybody's making a big show that security measures are taking place. But it's a false sense of security."

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