As the world experiences cataclysmic changes brought about by the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States, America’s commercial airlines face significantly increased costs for security personnel and technology.
Last week, officials for America’s major airlines told the US government that newly required security measures will necessitate an increase in the cost of a single round-trip ticket by as much as $25.
Major American air carriers are under a pressure to submit estimates to the US Transportation Security Administration on how much they would have to charge passengers to pay for increased cost of airline security. The agency, recently created by the US Department of Transportation, will soon determine the size of the surcharge that airlines can add to each ticket. The current surcharge is $2.50 for each leg of a trip.
The transportation-security agency has already proposed placing toll-free cellular telephones on commercial aircraft for passengers use in the event of an emergency, and running background checks on frequent fliers before they arrive at the airport.
The Transportation Security Administration also says in a recent report to Congress that it will need 57,500 additional employees to screen airline passengers and luggage.
In its congressional report, the agency says it needs 30,000 workers to staff airport checkpoints and screen passengers, and 27,500 to inspect checked luggage for explosives.
These 57,500 additional employees do not include armed air marshals on airplanes or an entirely new federal police force to be deployed at airport checkpoints. While Transportation Department Inspector General Kenneth M. Mead originally estimated the agency could need more than 70,000 employees, the department later said it would hire no more than 67,000.
The strategies in the congressional report are part of the new security ideas being considered as the Bush administration warns that a new terrorist attack could come at any time.
New technologies will play a central role in any new security procedures at airports and airlines, John Magaw, head of the Transportation Security Administration, said at a speech last week to the American Association of Airline Executives’ annual conference.
“I believe that is absolutely key,” said Magaw. He says his transportation-security agency has a working group of what Magaw called “technology-savvy people” whose main task is to find and assess new transportation-security technologies.
Magaw said many of these new aviation-security technologies and security procedures will be tested at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, which the Transportation Department is using as a national test site.
“The entire state of Maryland has been very supportive in getting this airport moving along,” Magaw said. “These lessons learned will be moved forward.”
Donald J. Carty, president and chief executive of AMR Corporation, the parent company of American Airlines, says he is concerned that too much security vigilance would hurt the airline industry and its customers.
“I don’t think great security comes from strip-searching Aunt Molly from Iowa,” he says. He denies that airlines were given adequate warning from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to avoid the Sept. 11 attack, which used United and American airlines planes to fly into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, saying warnings were too vague for airlines to take specific action. “They have been fairly general in the past,” says Carty.
The Federal Aviation Administration announced last week that it did not warn airlines after the arrest in August of student-pilot Zacarias Moussaoui because they believed his confinement ended a threat against aviation.
Scott Brenner, spokesman for the US Federal Aviation Administration said the FBI told his agency about Moussaoui’s arrest just weeks before the attacks.
“Nothing they told us was evidence that there was imminent threat, and as a result, we issued no bulletins to the airlines or airports,” Brenner said at a press briefing.
“All we knew was he was in jail. As a result of him being in jail, we did not think a threat was imminent.”
Moussaoui, who the FBI says trained at an Al-Qaeda-affiliated camp in Afghanistan, has been charged as a conspirator in the September attacks. He was arrested in August while training at a Minnesota flight school, after the FBI became suspicious of his efforts to receive training in flying passenger jets.
Carty says the attack should prompt the nation to take preventive action rather than worry about past failings.
“I think this game of finding someone to blame for 9/11 has gotten us on the wrong track,” says Carty.
Officials attending last weeks’ American Association of Airline Executives’ conference said improved communication among government security agencies is the best defense against a terrorist attack.
“We have to tie our intelligence units together,” Magaw said. He added that a lack of coordination among government agencies contributed to intelligence oversights leading to the Sept. 11 attacks.
“All of us are looking for the way to assure we have a seamless system of information,” says Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), the ranking Republican on the Senate Commerce aviation subcommittee. “We are trying to assure that all our agencies are communicating.”
Hutchinson plays down the risk that US security agencies would ignore again the kinds of warnings about a terrorist hijacking that preceded the Sept. 11 attack.
“We weren’t alert before Sept. 11,” says Hutchinson. “We are now.”
Magaw said the Transportation Security Administration must depend on the US Central Intelligence Agency and the FBI for its security warnings.
“We are not going to duplicate,” he said.
Magaw also urged the American public “not to panic” because of US Vice President Richard B. Cheney’s statement last week that another terrorist attack will likely occur very soon.
“This is not going to go away,” said Magaw. “They are in no hurry. They will take their time. They will look for weaknesses.”