Posted on: Sunday, December 15, 2002

Why airport procedures aren't uniform

Advertiser Staff

You say Aloha Airlines makes you stand in line to watch your bag go through the X-ray machine at the O'ahu interisland terminal but Hawaiian doesn't?

You say you always get swiped with that bomb-detecting stuff at the Honolulu airport, but only randomly on the Neighbor Islands?

Don't be worried that these differences between airlines and even airports mean there are loopholes in the net of security the government is trying to place around the nation's air traffic.

Airlines here won't talk specifics about security measures, but they say that there are many ways to meet the new anti-terrorism requirements. Each carrier had to work out how to meet the requirements based on its own equipment, procedures and personnel, and different carriers may take additional precautions of their own above and beyond the federal requirements.

"Differences in handling baggage, for example, are all traceable to technology," Hawaiian Airline spokesman Keoni Wagner explained.

"Federal regulations require that certain standards be met by all carriers, but there are a variety of sanctioned methodologies for meeting those requirements," he said.

For example, you may have heard that the law requires that airlines assure that you travel on the same flight as your bag, to prevent someone from checking a bag full of explosives and walking away.

But now most airlines are set up to check bags for explosive residue before the luggage gets put aboard an airplane.

"If a bag has been screened, it can be put on an earlier flight," rather than held for the flight being taken by the owner of the bag, Wagner said. He declined to elaborate on exactly what "screened" meant.

"We prefer not to go into detail as far as security measures are concerned."