What cost air safety?

This is not, of course, the same thing as inspecting every bag entering an aircraft. Additionally, the pilots don't call for baggage-to-passenger matchup, nor for secure storage for catering carts. But a spokesman for ALPA says that Woerth's testimony did ask for dissemination of a photo encryption technology that would expedite baggage-to-passenger matchup, and for enhanced security regulations for airport workers. "There are just gray lines between the two," says ALPA spokesman Ron Lovas, allowing that the flight attendants' recommendations are stronger but that the pilots don't necessarily have a problem with them.

According to the General Accounting Office, in the pre-Sept. 11 flying climate, more than 2 million passengers and their bags needed to be checked each day. The flight attendants' security measures would invariably add to the time and expense afforded each flight.

But concern for the bottom line was clearly heeded too much prior to Sept. 11, proponents of the tighter safety regulations say. And many fear that these concerns -- voiced most vociferously by the airlines -- are being heeded too much now as well. The Department of Transportation's rapid-response team on airline safety included Friend, as well as Woerth from the pilots association, but the airport security task force did not have any "worker representation," Deeks says.

The members of the task force included Northwest Airlines CEO Richard H. Anderson, Southwest Airlines chairman Herb Kelleher; American Association of Airport Executives Chip Barclay, and former U.S. Customs Service commissioner Raymond Kelly.

The Hollings-McCain bill contains a provision requiring the Department of Transportation to assess and report to Congress on the effectiveness of "the Federal Air Marshal program, security screening processes for carry-on and checked bags, and the security training provided to airline flight and cabin crews," according to a bill summary provided by Hollings' office.

But that's not enough, say the flight attendants, and the Department of Transportation is already listening too much to the airlines. "There was airline representation on the airport security task force," Deeks says, "and those three issues were suspiciously absent" from the task force's 16 recommendations. The task force even picked up Reagan National's new rule that one piece of carry-on luggage plus one personal item doesn't constitute two items.

The flight attendants' union is anticipating opposition from the airline industry to its call for just one carry-on per person, though ATA spokesman Wascom says that his organization has no official position on the matter. But some in the industry note that Continental Airlines, already hurting and laying off personnel by the thousands, had retrofitted many of its planes to allow even more overhead compartment space in preparation for a commercial push selling passengers on the idea of quick 'n' easy commuting free of the hassles of turnstiles.

Those days are long gone. Some flight attendants express even the fear that wine bottles for first class passengers could easily be turned into weapons. Will airlines, hoping to woo high-class travelers, be willing to switch to wine-in-a-box?

One way or another, Deeks says that the Transportation Department's airport security task force is being shortsighted, focusing entirely on measures that could have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks only. "They're thinking that if they close the sorts of loopholes used on Sept. 11 they don't have to close the rest of them," Deeks says. "Unfortunately we know that isn't true. If we leave any opening for terrorists, that's where they're going to strike."

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