Senate Passes Bill to Improve Security for Airlines, Airports

The Senate passed legislation Tuesday to upgrade security at airlines and airports, including directing the government to develop guidelines for warning passengers of terrorist threats.

But, rather than face a possible veto, it amended the bill approved by the House last week to give the Bush Administration more flexibility in making airlines buy and use a type of explosives detection device that has been widely criticized as being inaccurate.

The Federal Aviation Administration wanted to make airlines acquire 150 of the “thermal neutron analysis” devices at a total cost of $175 million and deploy them at 15 international airports in the United States and 25 abroad.

However, a test of the device last April by a presidential commission that investigated the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, showed that it could not detect the amount of plastic explosives used in that terrorist act.

“The mass deployment of technologies that cannot do the job will be a disservice to the traveling public and serve to freeze the development of bomb detectors that work,” Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.) said Tuesday.

The presidential commission found that the amount of explosives used in the Pan Am 103 bombing of Dec. 21, 1988, that killed 270 people was less than half the amount set in the FAA’s specifications.

In the bill passed by the House last week, the FAA would have been prevented from ordering use of the six devices already purchased without first declaring an emergency.

The Senate bill loosens the restrictions, allowing the FAA to order a limited use of the six devices at an airport subject to a threat without declaring an emergency, but only for 18 months, until better technology is developed.

The bill now goes back to the House.