Shooting on Jet Exposes Weak Link in LAX Security : Safety: Most of the 50,000 employees can pass through unchecked, as did man who used gun in suicide try.

When baggage handler Roman Soriano smuggled a handgun onto the Italian jetliner where he would shoot himself, he was exploiting a weak link in the security systems designed to keep the skies safe above Los Angeles International Airport.

As an employee of DynAir Corp., the firm hired by Alitalia to load luggage, Soriano possessed a computerized identification badge. With it, he had easy access to restricted areas of the Los Angeles airport without having to submit to a search or to pass through a metal detector, officials said.

Police said Soriano, apparently distraught over his love life, shot himself in the head inside the cargo hold of an Alitalia 747 that left Los Angeles on Nov. 8, bound for Italy. He was not discovered until the plane landed in Milan nine hours later, and he remains in a coma.

Investigators are trying to determine how he got the gun on board the plane, but they say it would not have been very difficult to do.

In the wake of the 1987 crash of a Pacific Southwest Airlines jet, federal and local authorities trumpeted new security measures that were supposed to make airport employees undergo the same scrutiny as passengers. The PSA flight out of Los Angeles International slammed into a hillside in San Luis Obispo County after a disgruntled former airline employee smuggled a gun on board and apparently shot the flight crew; all 43 people aboard were killed.

But at Los Angeles International today, officials say, only the employees who enter the airfield from terminals are directed to pass through magnetometers; the numerous employees who go to work from maintenance fields or other points of entry are not required to submit to any search or metal detection. To require such a search, the officials say, would be impractical and slow down operations.

Instead, the key security measure involving employees is the magnetized identification badge issued by the Department of Airports after a background check. It bears the photo of the employee, who is supposed to carry it at all times.

About 44,000 of more than 50,000 people who work at Los Angeles International have badges that entitle them to enter the airfield, airport manager Stephen Yee said.

These employees do not work for the airport authority but for private contractors who provide the full range of services at the airport, from baggage handling to airplane cleaning to food catering.

The private contractors are responsible for conducting a background check into the last five years of a job-seeker’s employment history. The information is passed on to the Department of Airports, which is responsible for verifying it before issuing the badge.

Before the PSA disaster, private contractors issued the badges. Now, as part of regulations mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration, all badges come from the Department of Airports and are centralized in a computer system. Any time an employee quits or is fired, the company is required to notify airport authorities immediately, and the former employee’s authorization is purged from the computers. If the employee fails to turn in the badge, a police report must be filed.

In the PSA incident, the man believed to have shot the crew and caused the crash was an airline employee who had been dismissed from his job but had retained one of three identification badges.

The FAA sets the minimum security standards that airports must meet, but the federal agency allows leeway in how the requirements are satisfied.

In addition to mandating that the badges be computerized and issued by a central authority, the FAA requires some form of day-to-day screening of employees.

“The federal regulations require there be a program in place for screening (employees), but we leave it up to the companies and the Department of Airports to determine how the screening will be accomplished,” FAA spokeswoman Elly Brekke said.

That screening can be as minimal as a supervisor checking to see if employees have their badges. The FAA has no requirement that employees be searched or pass through metal detectors.

The FAA does conduct routine, unannounced spot-checks to monitor “all aspects” of security, Brekke said. And the Department of Airports conducts regular patrols by security agents with portable computers who check and verify employees’ badges.

To make holding of the badges a more effective security control, airport authorities are in the process of installing badge-reading devices on the nearly 1,000 doors that lead from terminal buildings to the airfield. The idea is that an employee would have to use the badge to gain access.

The $13-million project is only one-third of the way completed, and will not be finished until the middle of next year, said Donald Miller, deputy executive director of the city’s Department of Airports.

The airport authority has also set up five bulletproof guard posts on the airfield and installed perimeter fencing.

“We are doing a lot in that regard,” Miller said. “(But) no matter what you do, you can never be 100% secure, no more than a police department can tell you you are 100% safe. . . . There’s got to be a balance between what you do, what it might cost, how much it interferes with the free flow of traffic. We try to hit the balance.”

To require all employees, especially the more mobile ones such as baggage handlers, to pass through magnetometers or to submit to searches would bring airport operations “to a standstill,” he said.

Despite the improvements cited by Miller, several employees complained that security at Los Angeles International is porous.

“As long as you have that green airport badge, that’s all that matters,” said a veteran ramp operations supervisor who asked that his name not be published. “You could walk in carrying your lunch or briefcase; who’s to know what’s in it?”

Yee, the airport manager, said: “If somebody wants to do something bad enough, it’s awful hard to stop them.”

Soriano worked for DynAir, a contractor that provides baggage handling and other services for several airlines at the airport. He had worked there about a year and had been employed by DynAir for a period in 1985, according to police.

DynAir officials did not return repeated telephone calls from The Times.

A spokesman for Alitalia, which hired DynAir, said the airline did not fault DynAir for allowing the gun on board because the required step of conducting a background check on Soriano before issuing his badge had been followed.

Meanwhile, police have pieced together more details about Soriano’s apparent motives for trying to take his life.

Originally, investigators, on the basis of statements from Soriano’s friends, believed that the 28-year-old Mexican national was distraught over the recent breakup of his marriage. After talking further with family members, however, police now say it appears that he was upset over plans to get married that were going awry.

Soriano was expecting to come into some money from a former employer and was going to use the windfall to return to Mexico to marry a girlfriend, Los Angeles Police Detective Brian Carr said.

Carr said that when the money did not come through, Soriano apparently chose to commit suicide.