Editorial
Safety in the skies is far from assured

Americans have another think coming if they suppose their greatest sacrifice in the coming war against terrorism is a bit of inconvenience in air travel, like checking in a half-hour earlier and giving up curb-side skycap service.

It became tragically obvious Tuesday that failure to implement the dozens of sensible recommendations by scores of commissions in the 1990s made the hijacking of four passenger airlines breathtakingly easy.

Those conditions must be ended quickly. But nothing will change, really, until the people who administer airport security change.

The fundamental problem with airport security in the United States is the inherent conflict of interest of those asked to administer airport security — the Federal Aviation Administration and the airlines.

Because the primary purpose of the FAA and the airlines is to move as many passengers as comfortably and profitably as possible, they have resisted in myriad ways, subtle and overt, the obvious requirements of true security.

This does not mean it's necessary to create an entirely new, independent enforcement organization for airports. It does mean that airport security personnel must advance quickly from minimum-wage, untrained afterthoughts to a highly professional force operating with the force of law through the powers of federal deputization.

The following steps are also essential:

• State-of-the-art electronic scanning devices, capable of spotting plastic weapons and explosives, must be installed at all major U.S. airports instead of just a few.

• Airport security screeners need much higher pay and perhaps five times as much training as they now receive. They also must feel empowered to challenge the crankiest of passengers.

• A computer-assisted passenger prescreening system, which helps to identify terrorism suspects, should be fully implemented. Yes, it constitutes an invasion of privacy — something we'll have to exchange for greater peace of mind in air travel.

• Cockpit doors must be stronger.

• The responsibility for screening passengers and baggage no longer can be left to vary from airline to airline. The federal government must take over security screening operations, which now are the responsibility of the FAA but are carried out by airport operators and airlines that for the most part have relied on low-paid, ill-trained workforces with high turnover rates. Few have gone through full criminal background checks, though they will have to from now on.

The metal detectors and X-ray machines they operate have been shown in tests to miss as many as 40 percent of weapons sent through by testers.

A government force, highly trained to elicit and interpret telling answers from travelers, can be the most effective screening system, as Israel and several other countries have demonstrated. Other measures, some of them ordered this week, must produce far better matching of all luggage with travelers and polite but more thorough searching of passengers and their possessions.

We've paid a terrible price for complacency.

It must end.