WASHINGTON - Starting Friday, every piece of luggage going on board an airplane must be checked for explosives or matched with a passenger.
That's the goal, anyway, of an extraordinary new law passed by Congress after Sept. 11.
While some aviation experts have dismissed the deadline as unrealistic, the airlines are promising to meet the law's requirements, setting up fears of long lines, travel delays, and even canceled flights.
Michael Wascom, spokesman for the Air Transport Association, which represents 22 domestic airlines, said it's "too early to tell" whether the enhanced security will send ripples through the traveling public. Much, he said, depends on how federal regulators interpret the new rules.
Most major airlines are expected to rely more on an enhanced baggage-matching system than direct inspections to comply with the new federal regulations.
But people should be prepared to encounter a highly scrutinized system that's under a whole new level of stress.
"Minimalism is in," said Kevin Mitchell, chairman of the Business Travel Coalition. "Take with you as little as possible."
Some delays, perhaps, are inevitable. "The days of running up to your airplane with 15 minutes to spare are gone," said Dawn Deeks of the Association of Flight Attendants. "That went out with Sept. 11th."
For Americans trying to reclaim their sense of safety in the skies, a lot is riding on how air carriers, airport authorities and the federal government solve the daunting logistical details that confront them this week.
The law says that by Friday the airlines must screen all checked baggage with any combination of bomb-sniffing dogs, hand searches, explosive-detection machines or bag matching - the practice of assuring that every piece of checked luggage has a human counterpart on board the plane.
And Jan. 18 is only an interim deadline, one step toward an even more ambitious Jan. 1, 2003, deadline to install 2,000 bomb-detecting machines at airports around the nation. With only two companies that make bomb scanners certified by the Federal Aviation Administration, that will be an engineering challenge with no ready-made solution.
Along the way is yet another deadline of interest to consumers: On Feb. 1, every ticket will include a surcharge of up to $5 per one-way flight, to help pay for the new security upgrades.
Some aviation security experts say it remains to be seen whether everyday reality at the nation's airports will conform to the letter of the law - or whether the law will have to bend a little to conform to the practical realities of moving 1.8 million people around the nation by air every day.
"It's going to be very difficult to do well," said aviation industry analyst John Kasarda, a University of North Carolina management professor and director of the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise. "Can some effort be made? Yes. Will it be effective? Unlikely."
Although the airlines have recently muted their misgivings about the deadlines - at least publicly - others in the industry say the tight schedule is more about Washington politics than safety.
"It's a fiasco," said Colorado aviation consultant Michael Boyd, noting that the industry currently strains to inspect just 5 percent of all checked luggage. "We've politicized safety. What happens on the 18th (of January) is political theater."
Boyd, whose firm works with airlines and airports, does not foresee delays, but only because he says airlines will be forced to cut back on flights to a level where they can screen baggage. "
Boyd and others point to flaws in each of the screening methods spelled out in the aviation security law: dogs are effective bomb-sniffers, but tire easily; bomb-detector machines are large, cumbersome and some have false-alarm rates of as high as 20 percent; hand searchers are notoriously prone to human error; and matching baggage to passengers is no defense against Sept. 11-style suicide bombers.
But while the airlines have resisted past government efforts to impose a comprehensive bag matching system on domestic flights - it's been required on international flights since 1989 - the practice is now expected to help them meet the requirements of the new law.
Saturday
December 28th, 2024
5:13AM
