Is Congress' Air Security Bill Enough?

N E W   Y O R K, Nov. 19, 2001 -- President Bush signed into law today a new aviation security bill hailed by lawmakers as a breakthrough in making the skies safer. But does the measure go far enough?

"The law I will sign should give all Americans greater confidence when they fly," said Bush before turning the act into law at Reagan National Airport in Washington.

The Aviation Security and Transportation Security Act of 2001, the fruit of a compromise between Senate and House bills, contains some strong measures to bolster the security of air travelers, including a requirement to screen all checked luggage on domestic flights. At present, no more than 10 percent of such luggage is screened for explosives.

But even as Congress added the mandate to screen checked baggage while debating the bill, it dropped a provision that air-safety advocates have long supported: requiring the airlines to match all checked bags to passengers on board domestic flights.

Positive bag-matching, as it is known, has been standard practice on international flights and in Europe for years.

Congress' bill calls for complete searches to be made starting in mid-January, but does not require complete screening systems for checked bags to be installed until December 2002. In the meantime, some think bag-matching can still be an effective deterrent to terrorists.

"We could have bag-matching by Thanksgiving," says Arnold Barnett, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who headed a 1997 study on the subject. He adds: "We may not have years until the terrorists strike again. It may be months or weeks or even days."

Bag-Matching: International Standard Since 1980s

Most of the measures in the bill are aimed at preventing hijackings like those of Sept. 11. It includes federalization of the lapse-prone airport screening work force, strengthened airplane cockpit doors and armed air marshals on many flights.

But the practice of bag-matching, in which no luggage is allowed in the cargo hold unless the person it belongs to is aboard the plane, has been used by other countries for years.

The Federal Aviation Administration required it for all international flights run by U.S. airlines starting in 1986, the year after a bomb on an Air India flight killed 329 people. The International Civil Aviation Organization began requiring it in 1989, after the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. In both cases, terrorists had placed bombs in checked baggage and then not boarded the plane.

Even those supporting bag-matching, like Barnett, acknowledge that it alone would not deter a terrorist willing to be blown up along with the plane. And those in the industry say a thorough inspection of all checked luggage makes bag-matching redundant — which appears to be Congress' reason for not mandating it.

"Positive bag-match does not deter suicide bombers," says Michael Wascom, of the Air Transport Association in Washington, the airlines' trade group. "There are other techniques that provide real security without unnecessary and disruptive inconvenience." Wascom says the airlines favor a combination of X-raying checked luggage and subjecting it to bomb-detection devices, hand inspections, and even bomb-sniffing dogs.

And Dawn Deeks of the Association of Flight Attendants, which has vigorously pushed for screening checked luggage, says "the addition of bag-matching would be nice," but adds that it "becomes less important if 100 percent of all luggage is screened."

Deterrent or Redundant?

But Barnett says the jury is still out about the effectiveness of the screening procedures to be used on checked baggage. He says Congress' bill is "a step forward conceptually, but how the principle will be applied is another matter." And he argues that bomb-detection is not a clear-cut operation.

"The bomb that destroyed Pan Am 103 was in a Toshiba radio," notes Barnett. "What if you're scanning a bag and you see a Toshiba radio?"

For that reason, some argue, bag-matching could serve as an additional deterrent for non-suicide bombers who think they can slip bomb-carrying bags through security anyway; the practice would complement bomb-screening instead of being made redundant by it.

"Both of those measures are necessary and would in and of themselves increase security," says Adam Goldberg, a policy analyst at the Consumers' Union in Washington. "Any time you provide more scrutiny, more effective scrutiny, you're going to get a better result."

Testifying before the Senate last Wednesday, Kenneth Mead, the Department of Transportation's chief inspector, noted the bomb-detection machines currently used for screening checked baggage were being used erratically even after Sept. 11. He also noted that one overworked screener had been found falling asleep on the job.

And until now, the FAA has been operating on the assumption that it will be years before its two manufacturers of bomb-detection machines — InVision Technologies and L-3 — have the technology in place at every airport in America.

"The manufacturers have told us they could produce enough machines to make that possible by the end of 2004," says FAA spokesman Paul Takamoto. That production rate would have to be increased to comply with the new legislation.

How Much Would It Cost, Anyway?

Overall, Takamoto says the FAA is still "moving toward 100 percent bag-match" for domestic flights, and "seeing if it is possible at this point."

The airlines have tended to cite concerns over the cost of bag-matching, and say it would cause too many delays, especially for travelers with connecting flights.

But the FAA-funded survey headed by Barnett — in which bag-matching was used on 8,000 flights by 11 airlines for two weeks — found that fares would increase by less than 50 cents per passenger while adding a seven-minute delay to just one out of every seven flights, on the average.

Barnett says that when his group solicited estimates of the cost from the major airlines, "They played accounting games. Talk about fuzzy math." He says the airlines' price estimates were all higher than his, and varied wildly, with the largest eight times higher than the smallest.

None of the major airlines contacted for this piece would provide an estimate of the cost of bag-matching, citing general policies of not divulging security information.

But if the issue of bag-matching does come down to cost, polls have shown for more than a decade that the traveling public is willing to pay significantly more for airline tickets if it means ensuring tighter security.

In an August 1996 ABCNEWS poll, for instance, 77 percent of respondents said they would be willing to pay 10 percent more for airline tickets if the money were used for safety and security measures.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, this sentiment remains intact. A Time/CNN poll released on Sept. 13 shows 64 percent of those surveyed saying they would pay $50 more per ticket in order to increase airport security, with 33 percent opposed.

Jet Blue Already Doing It

In the meantime, one U.S. airline, Jet Blue Airways, has already implemented a full bag-matching policy since the terror attacks.

Fiona Morrison, a spokeswoman for Jet Blue, declined to discuss the cost or specifics of the apparent ease with which the airline put the system in place, also citing security considerations. "We're very small and we're nimble," she said.

For his part, Barnett says it would be easy for even a much bigger airline to put into place: "When we did the test in 1997, they literally implemented it in a day."

And he remains solidly in support of putting bag-matching into practice: "Obviously it's not perfect in itself, but neither are the alternatives."