Posted on: Friday, October 12, 2001
The September 11th attack
Inspectors find lapses in airlines' luggage scan
By John Heilprin
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — 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 yesterday.
The Federal Aviation Administration directed the airlines in a previously undisclosed order after the Sept. 11 hijackings to make continuous rather than part-time use of their high-tech bomb-detection machines.
"Despite a recognized need for heightened security, air carriers still are not fully utilizing these machines to the maximum extent possible," Transportation Inspector General Kenneth Mead told a House aviation subcommittee hearing.
At the FAA's request, Mead would not disclose which airports or airlines were inspected. But last week, acting Massachusetts Gov. Jane Swift reassigned the head of security at Boston's Logan Airport, where two of the hijacked airliners departed.
FAA chief Jane Garvey said yesterday that she had just learned of the inspector general's findings and needed to examine them further.
"We need to know more about it," she 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."
A spokesman for the Air Transport Association, a trade group for the airlines, disputed the inspector general's finding yesterday.
"Our carriers are doing what they are instructed to do by the FAA," Michael Wascom said.
Officials told the subcommittee that before last month's FAA order, the multimillion-dollar bomb detection machines were used only selectively — largely based on responses to a computer-assisted passenger profiling system and for passengers lacking proper IDs or failing a security quiz.
The FAA has spent $441 million for 164 of the machines, most of which were installed at almost 50 airports for use by 20 airlines.
