Strict Curbs on Airport Worker Access Planned

The Transportation Department announced Wednesday that it intends to impose tighter restrictions on workers at the nation’s 270 largest commercial airports.

Under proposed regulations, the department will require that the nation’s largest airports install computer-controlled systems or other procedures that limit access that airport workers have to aircraft and baggage areas.

Although Transportation Secretary James H. Burnley IV cited the Dec. 21 explosion and crash of Pan American Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in announcing the rules, they date from an investigation of a Dec. 7, 1987, crash of a Pacific Southwest Airlines plane near Paso Robles, Calif.

Used Old Identification

That incident killed all 43 people aboard the plane and is believed to have occurred after a former PSA employee began firing a weapon he brought aboard the plane to kill his former boss. Investigators suspected that the worker used his old airport identification card to gain access to the plane at Los Angeles International Airport.

Federal Aviation Administration officials said that, under the computerized system envisioned by the regulations, airport workers would be given identification cards with encoded magnetic tapes. The cards would allow workers access only to areas where they work and could be coded to prevent any former worker from gaining access.

The regulations, to be published Friday in the Federal Register and to take effect 30 days later, were opposed by the Airport Operators Council International, an organization of some of the nation’s largest airports.

Deborah Lunn, the council’s acting executive director, said the Transportation Department had “drastically underestimated” the cost of the security systems and that they will force many airports to turn to local taxpayers to pay for increased security.

An FAA spokesman said the systems should range in price from $1.5 million at the largest airports to $65,000 at the smallest of the affected terminals.