Security Screen Ignores Airport Staff

It has become so tediously commonplace at John Wayne Airport that most people don’t even notice it anymore.

As passengers line up to pass through metal detectors, uniformed flight attendants and badge-carrying airline employees slip around the screening devices with a nod and a wave from airport security personnel.

“That’s the way things work around here,” said Sheriff’s Deputy Keith Davis, who works airport security. “But after what happened, well . . . I guess we’ll see if things change.”

What happened was the growing suspicion that a disgruntled former USAir employee may have used his airline credentials to bypass security and smuggle a gun and six rounds of ammunition aboard a flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco in order to kill his former boss, who was a passenger on the flight.

The Pacific Southwest Airlines plane crashed Monday after the pilot reported hearing gunfire in the passenger section. All 43 people on board were killed.

The latest airline disaster focused new attention on airport security and raised questions about how a gun could have been smuggled aboard a flight.

While the incident alarmed officials at John Wayne Airport, they conceded that smuggling a gun on board a plane would be relatively easy for any one of the hundreds of people holding airport or airline security passes.

Airport security, it seems, is better at screening passengers than the people who work at the airport and have access to the planes.

There are hundreds of people, from flight attendants to baggage handlers to the people who load lunch trays onto commercial jets, who have photo identification badges allowing them to work in and around the planes. These people can and normally do bypass the familiar metal-detecting stations that passengers must clear before boarding their flights.

In the case of the PSA crash, investigators were trying to determine if the suspect flashed one of his airline identification badges--he apparently surrendered one after being fired--in order to avoid the metal detector and successfully board the plane with a gun.

At least one official involved in security at John Wayne Airport, Sheriff’s Lt. Robert NeSmith, suggested Tuesday that all airline employees be required to undergo the same security clearance as passengers before being allowed to work in the area where the commercial jets are parked.

“This is something that the Federal Aviation Administration is going to have to address,” said NeSmith, head of the sheriff’s airport security detail. “Even then it would be difficult. You could restrict air travel so badly to make it safe and then you’d be taking away some freedoms, and I don’t think anyone wants that.

“But I would suggest that whether they have an ID card or not, they’d have to go through the (metal detector) screening.”

Alan Murphy, an airport spokesman, said it appeared to him that in the case of the PSA disaster, “there was a breakdown at the airline.”

“The carriers are responsible for the people that they hire,” Murphy said. “They are the ones that have to run the background checks. They are in the best position to know who is a stable person.

How Far to Go?

“There is a question of how far you can realistically go” in establishing a security program, he added. “You can’t search every article on the airfield. Security is something we constantly rethink. Some people think that maybe everyone should go through a metal detector to minimize these kinds of cases.”

Yet some cases may be totally unpredictable, Murphy said, “like if you have the president of (an airline who) goes wacko. Who could predict that?”

As it stands now, each airline and airport employer is responsible for running background checks on new employees. A letter is then written stating that the person has a clean record, and the employee is issued an identification badge. The badges are color coded, giving workers access to different areas.

Although security procedures vary from carrier to carrier, airline officials at John Wayne refused to discuss their procedures with reporters.

Routinely Cleared

Other security personnel, however, confirmed that in most cases, uniformed and badge-carrying airline employees were routinely cleared through security checkpoints without being required to pass through metal-detecting stations.

“At this airport, there is a lot of responsibility on the tenants and airlines” to guarantee passenger safety, Lt. NeSmith said. “In the case of that guy on PSA, if they had made him go through the screening, then it wouldn’t have mattered whether he was wearing a badge and a uniform. They would have found the weapon.”

“On the other hand, some things you just can’t stop. What if a bus driver goes wacko and drives over a cliff with 44 people on board? What are you going to do?”