Airport 'more alert,' official says

Travelers were forced to wait outside the terminal Sunday after a security lapse at the Honolulu International Airport caused a false alarm. Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer

Weapons screening was tightened up at Honolulu International Airport yesterday as authorities continued to investigate a false alarm security breach that closed the airport for two hours Sunday, delaying as many as 4,000 passengers and 20 flights.

Allen Agor, federal security manager for the Federal Aviation Administration at the airport, said there will be increased "management oversight by persons more competent" in supervising the screening operation, and that all screeners in the airport will be expected to be more vigilant.

Passengers may notice that screeners will be "more alert, more meticulous" in their inspection of bags.

"This was a hard lesson learned for the screening work force here," Agor said.

A screener and her supervisor, both employees of the Wackenhut Corp., remain suspended by the FAA from their screening duties at the airport.

"They are pulled off line and relieved of their duties until they are adequately retrained," Agor said. "One procedure is to make sure they know how to 'suspect' a bag, to identify and resolve the threat and issue a timely notification to a law enforcement officer."

Wackenhut was providing screening for Hawaiian Airlines at the interisland terminal when the false alarm occurred.

The airline still could face fines of up to $11,000 per violation of security regulations, but the investigation and enforcement action could take up to a year, Agor said.

Hawaiian Airlines spokesman Keoni Wagner said the airline did not have any additional information or comment yesterday, and referred questions to Wackenhut. Wackenhut did not return a phone call yesterday.

Agor said airlines throughout the airport have been made aware of passengers' complaints of confusion after the evacuation. The airlines are expected to provide more personnel to provide customer service in the future, he said.

Agor said uncertainty about the situation caused authorities to evacuate the entire airport even though it soon appeared that the scare might be a false alarm.

The incident began at 9 a.m. when a test image of a bag containing an object that might be a gun appeared on an X-ray screen terminal.

The screener watching the terminal did not respond to the image in time to shut down the conveyor belt, examine the bag, and stop the person carrying it. Normally, the computer will reveal that the image is a test after the screener stops the process and "interrogates" the computer.

In this case, Agor said, the screener did not interrogate the computer program promptly and continued to believe that the image was real and not a test. And the screener saw only a portion of the image.

Agor said that by the time the screener notified a supervisor, the passenger who was moving through the checkpoint when the test image flashed had disappeared into the concourse.

It took about three minutes for word to be passed to security officers from Akal Security, the company hired by the airport to provide the first law enforcement response.

Within 15 minutes, officials had identified a passenger who was going through the checkpoint at the time the image appeared. That person did not have a weapon.

But there were still two problems: First, the screener still believed she had seen a real image. And, second, there was some disagreement among authorities as to whether the person who was stopped by authorities was in fact the passenger seen going through the checkpoint.

Later his identity was confirmed by surveillance video tapes from the check point.

Given those uncertainties, Agor said, authorities fell back on the rule: "When in doubt, check it out." When there is even a shadow of a doubt, Agor said, "we have to make sure maximum safety is provided."

The order was given to evacuate the interisland terminal, and then, because the passenger had reached the overseas terminal, it was ordered evacuated as well.

At that point, the entire facility was searched to make sure that a gun had not been left inside.

At 10:55 a.m., the facility was cleared and re-opened, but it took hours to move all the passengers back through the security check points again, Agor said.

Agor said it was the second such incident known to have occurred at Honolulu International. Three or four years ago, he said, "there was a similar situation where screeners lost control of a bag with a simulated image of a weapon and it went into the secure area."

He said that Honolulu had updated its contingency plan for such events in November, knowing other airports were encountering similar problems.

The update enabled officials to carry out their evacuation and security sweep in less than two hours, he said.

Agor met yesterday with the airport manager, the state's security manager, the chief of security for the airport, the sheriff's office and the airlines security coordinator.

Reach Walter Wright at wwright@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8054.