Inspections in the past week at seven of the nation's 20 highest-risk airports found most airlines are not complying with new federal orders to scan all checked baggage for explosives, the Transportation Department's inspector general said Thursday. The Federal Aviation Administration directed the airlines in a previously undisclosed order after the Sept. 11 airliner hijackings to make continuous rather than part-time use of their high-tech bomb-detection machines. [...] At the FAA's request, Mead would not disclose which airports or airlines were inspected. [...] "We need to know more about it," [FAA Administrator Jane Garvey] said. "There's also a question . . . if the term 'continuous' is too ambiguous. We have required that it be continuous and we are enforcing it." [...] "Air carriers' reluctance to increase the use is centered in their belief that passengers would not accept the inconvenience," [Transportation Inspector General Kenneth M. Mead] said.
Um ... OK.
So what's ambiguous about the word "continuous"? Is there some part of the concept of "Scan everything all the time" that airlines just aren't hearing?
Now that the report is out, it will be interesting to see which way air travelers go. Maybe I'm mistaken, but I think passengers have shown -- in tolerating the amazingly long security lines at some airports -- that they're willing to accept a bit more inconvenience for a bit more surety that their plane won't go boom. (Of course, the plane going boom was never the issue, but ... whatever.)
Mind, there clearly aren't enough machines out there. O'Hare alone could probably use 30-40 of them. Heck, United could probably use that many; I'm sure they have -- or had -- 10-20 flights per hour leaving O'Hare, at least. 164 machines is clearly nowhere near enough. Unfortunately, it's probably like the voting machines issue. (Say, whatever happened with that, anyway?) There are only certain manufacturers certified to make the machines, they have only one or two plants, so they can only make so many machines. But still ... if they have the machines, they ought to at least try to use them.
I wonder if the machines are used more at the other 13 high-risk airports? In any event, the decision not to publicise the names of the airports -- and I do understand why they wouldnt -- may have the unintended side effect of further depressing travel at all 20. After all, it's not hard to figure out what some of them would be; just figure out which are the busiest airports and run with it. (I'm terribly impressed with one airport's reported reason for not installing, though: it clashed with their lobby decor. Oh, and in that second article, note the firm that provides security for 40% of the country's airports has not only been found guilty of hiring felons for security positions in the airports -- which is illegal -- but continued to do so after being found guilty. Mind, during the boom years, finding someone to take a minimum wage level job that was boring to boot was incredibly difficult, but still ...)
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
Search entries:
12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!