For Immediate Release

December 18, 2001

Contact: Jim Berard

(202) 225-6260

 

 

Rep. Oberstar Criticizes Airlines’ Call for Extension Of Baggage Screening Deadline

 

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WASHINGTON—Rep. James L. Oberstar, Ranking Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, today responded to a call by the nation’s major airlines to delay a baggage screening requirement set in the new aviation security act.

           

            Oberstar’s statement follows:

 

            The ink is barely dry on the Aviation and Transportation Security Act (Pub. L. 107-71), and the airlines are seeking to delay implementation of a critical provision in the Act; the requirement that, no later than 60 days after enactment (by Jan. 19) all checked baggage must be screened.  The airlines, through their trade association, are proposing an amendment to extend this deadline by 30 days.  They are trying to bury this amendment in one of the huge appropriation bills that will be passed during the frantic last days of the Congressional session. 

 

There is no justification for a delay in screening checked baggage.  Understanding the complexities associated with the 60-day mandate, the Act permits a flexible approach for screening baggage.  The Act gives the Department of Transportation, in coordination with the airlines, flexibility to determine which methods, or combinations of methods, should be used to screen checked baggage in any given situation; the authorized methods include explosive detection systems, positive passenger bag match, manual inspections, bomb-sniffing dogs, TRACE detection (which “sniffs” for chemicals) and other effective technologies.  The law specifically provides that DOT may require the airlines to conduct positive bag match programs (Section 110 (b) of the Act).

 

The airlines do not suggest that the 60-day deadline cannot be met by employing one or more of these methods.  Instead, the airlines position paper indicates that they are reluctant to carry out a program of matching checked baggage to passengers boarding an aircraft.  This program would be administered by the airlines, while other methods of screening would be carried out by the government.  Perhaps the airlines believe that if they delay the effective date, more bags will be screened by the government and fewer bags will be subject to a bag match at airline expense. 

 

I agree with the airlines that, in the long run, bag match by itself is not the ideal security method because it does not protect against suicide bombers.  However, bag match does protect against other terrorists, and there are many more potential non-suicide bombers than suicide bombers. Positive bag match should be used, as necessary, to meet the 60-day deadline, and then supplemented with other methods as equipment and personnel become available.  The effectiveness of aviation security is dependent upon overlapping redundancy of diverse technologies and human intervention to thwart the terrorist.  We must not relax our vigilance on any one of the available security measures.

 

I am confident that the Appropriations Committees will recognize that the 60-day deadline can be met, and I am also confident that the public will justifiably insist that there be no delay.

 

On this issue, the airlines are maneuvering as they always have on airline security.  First, they remain relatively quiet when security problems are in the spotlight and Congress is passing strict security legislation.  Then, when the glare of publicity has faded, the airlines try to weaken the legislation by opposing implementing regulations, or by seeking legislative amendments.

 

For example, eleven years ago, Congress passed the Aviation Security and Improvement Act of 1990 (Pub. L. 101-604), which required a criminal history record check for persons with unescorted access to an air carrier or foreign air carrier aircraft or secured areas of an airport.  The FAA proposed requiring criminal history record checks for all individuals with unescorted access, as the legislation contemplated. 

 

The airlines objected and, after a strong lobbying campaign, FAA limited the criminal history record check to cases in which there was a 12-month gap in employment.  In the 2001 Security Act, Congress corrected this hole in aviation security by requiring in statutory law a criminal history record check for all persons with access to secured areas of an airport.

 

Similarly, 15 years ago the airlines resisted FAA’s efforts to improve the poor performance of the contractors which the airlines had hired to screen passengers and carry-on baggage.  In the 1980s, the FAA began “test object cases” in which it would attempt to bring simulated bombs (a clock, with wires coming out of it) through security checkpoints.  The air carriers and their contractors had an appalling rate of failure to detect these test objects, but the FAA had no authority to impose civil penalties for the alarming rate of failures.

 

Frustrated, FAA sought authority from Congress to impose civil penalties.  In December 1987, Congress established a two-year “demonstration program” authorizing the FAA to prosecute and adjudicate administrative civil penalty actions involving less than $50,000. 

 

FAA began using this authority to impose civil penalties when an airline or its contractors failed to detect dangerous objects.  Rather than improve their performance, the major airlines brought strong political pressure to halt the civil penalties program.  Although Congress resisted the pressure and reauthorized the program, FAA basically stopped using civil penalties for security cases for several years.  

 

            Now the airlines, true to form, are seeking to delay implementation of the Security Act we passed a few weeks ago.  It is appalling that, such a short time after the horrific events of September 11, the airlines are up to their old tricks.  They must not succeed.

 

 

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