HEADLINE: BUSINESS TRAVEL: ON THE ROAD;
The Lull Before the Storm For the Nation's Airports
BYLINE: By Joe Sharkey
DATELINE: SALT LAKE CITY
BODY:
THE
impossible-to-meet Dec. 31 deadline for screening all checked bags will largely
be met, Adm. James M. Loy told airport executives here last week. Listening to
the retired admiral, who is the acting under secretary of transportation for
security, I recalled an old saying from my distant Navy days:
Stand by for heavy rolls. On a ship, it means get ready to rock,
because we're heading into rough seas. This is not bad advice now for business
travelers, who have mostly made their peace with the airport experience over the
last year. Come New Year's Day, when every checked bag is officially required to
be examined for explosives, certain adjustments in that stance may become
necessary.
"I am well aware of the concerns raised by
some airport operators that pressing forward with the Dec. 31 deadline will
result in unacceptable delays for airline passengers and added costs for
airports," Admiral Loy said. "However, I must balance the concerns of the
airport operators with the very real security concerns that our enemies so
effectively brought to our attention." He added, "I don't, and I won't, support
a wholesale delay in the Dec. 31 deadline."
Admiral Loy
happens to be retired from the Coast Guard, not the Navy. This recalls another
Navy saying, which is that Coast Guard officers are required to be at least six
feet tall, so that they can walk to shore if their ships go down. But that's
beside the point in rough seas. In July, when the admiral took over and rallied
a badly flagging Transportation Security Administration -- and I promise to give
a rest now to the naval allusions -- his orders were full speed ahead.
Meanwhile, officials at the T.S.A., which celebrates its
first birthday today, are high-fiving one another this week, and with some
justification. "Much to the surprise of many skeptics," as Admiral Loy put it,
the agency has managed to hire and train more than 44,000 federal airport
screeners, who are now working checkpoints at all 429 commercial airports in the
United States.
The airport security work force, once
extremely low paid and inadequately trained by private contractors who ran the
checkpoints until last year, now consists entirely of federal employees making a
living wage -- $25,000 to $35,000 a year, with benefits. Every frequent traveler
I know agrees that the employees at airport security, where sullenness and
outright rudeness once were common, are now overwhelmingly professional and
courteous.
That's made a huge difference to business
travelers, even though security-screening procedures themselves can still seem
idiotic. Especially that computerized secondary gate-screening system, which
uses mystical Harry Potter-like formulas that often select the least-suspicious
passengers, including harried business travelers flying on complicated
itineraries, to be pulled aside for that irritating additional perp pat-down and
bag check while everyone else is boarding the plane.
At the Airports Council International-North America conference here
last week, Admiral Loy and other federal officials spoke forcefully about the
need to balance stringent security requirements, like as the Dec. 31 bag-screening deadline, with customer-service imperatives like
allaying the resentment of business travelers about the so-called security
hassle factor. Airlines say this has cost billions this year in lost ticket
revenue, as some business travelers simply choose not to go.
Right now, during a traditionally slow period for travel, airports by
and large are running fairly smoothly, the occasional security alarm aside. I've
been traveling a lot over the last month, and the two major impressions I have
about airport security are shorter lines with fewer problems and large numbers
of white-shirted T.S.A. agents clustered around checkpoints with little to do.
(This impression, incidentally, gives legs to the wisecrack currently being
passed among business travelers that the acronym T.S.A. in fact stands for
"Thousands Standing Around.")
But don't get used to the
calm.
Business travelers looking ahead to trips this
winter need to be prepared for some rougher times, several airport managers
said, though Admiral Loy switched gears and said yesterday that the bag-screening deadline would not be strictly enforced at about a
dozen big airports. Many other airport managers are now frantically trying to
jury-rig a bag-screening system that will enable them and the T.S.A. to declare
victory come Jan. 1 without at the same time bringing air travel to a virtual
standstill.
Starting Jan. 1, travelers will most likely
encounter a baggage processing minefield, airport managers warn. About 1,100 of
the eight-ton, S.U.V.-size explosive-detection scanning machines are supposed to
be installed at airports (out of an estimated 6,000 that are needed). At best,
these machines process 150 to 200 bags an hour, and flag 25 to 30 percent of
those bags as false positives. Flagged bags then have to be opened and examined
by hand.
Supplementing the big machines will be about
6,000 table-top trace-detection devices, which require a screener to run a
heated swab over a bag. When these machines were used on carry-on bags during
the Olympics Games here last winter, processing time averaged 47 seconds a bag,
according to a study by the Public Policy Institute of the libertarian Reason
Foundation.
Bags that the machines can't get to are
likely to be opened and spot-checked by security employees. Airport managers say
they don't have a clue yet how they're going to handle the inevitable pilferage
problems when thousands of employees are given luggage-room access to
passengers' belongings.
So, many airport executives are
braced for chaos. But most remain cautiously confident that, as Admiral Loy
appeared to signal yesterday, the T.S.A. will help them figure out a way to
control the damage and introduce flexible interim solutions to total baggage
screening if the system does start breaking down in January. About 650 million
passengers will pass though domestic airports this year, many of them checking
at least one bag. The math is daunting, but a degree of optimism still prevails.
"The thinking is, If we don't get it right the first
time around, we can come back after an interval and then perfect it," said
Steven D. Van Beek, the senior vice president for policy at the airports
council. But he wasn't making any predictions on when perfection might
arrive.
On the Road appears each Tuesday. E-mail:
jsharkey@nytimes.com.
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