Miami Case Puts New Focus on LAX Security

Some of the security flaws that prosecutors say made Miami International Airport ripe for criminality long have been addressed at Los Angeles International Airport, but LAX has its own problems, and experts warn that no such facility is entirely immune from lawbreakers.

In recent years, LAX has suffered as a result of confusion about security procedures and lines of authority--a tricky issue at a facility that houses a bevy of local, state and federal law enforcement agencies and through which more than 60 million passengers move each year. Also, some officials worry because most of the airport’s front-line security personnel--the screeners who check carry-on bags for drugs and weapons--are minimum-wage workers who complain that they feel mistreated by their employers, the companies that contract with the airlines to provide that service.

“There are people who are vulnerable,” said one airline official. “You have people who might be tempted by a quick buck.”

In Miami on Wednesday, a federal indictment charged that nearly 60 American Airlines baggage handlers and food service workers conspired to smuggle drugs and weapons. The size and scope of the alleged conspiracy has raised questions of passenger safety as well as airline security.

Charlie Le Blanc, a security consultant to airlines, said the type of security breach in Miami could happen at LAX or any big city airport. “The potential is there,” Le Blanc said. “There’s no guarantee employees won’t do this in the future.”

Still, several officials said LAX, though far from invulnerable, ranks among the nation’s safer airports, in part because it has been forced to learn from experience.

In 1987, an ex-USAir employee used his badge to get on a Pacific Southwest Airlines flight, where he attacked the pilot. The plane crashed, killing all 43 aboard.

More recently, LAX scrambled to increase its security when the Unabomber threatened to blow up a plane here--a threat he did not carry out, but which nonetheless sparked an intense internal security review.

Partly as a result of those incidents, airline officials and others say the airport maintains a sophisticated system of special badges that limits access to certain parts of the airport and keeps a record of employee movements. LAX was a leader in developing that type of system, Le Blanc and others said, and similar systems now are used at other large airports, including John F. Kennedy in New York and Dulles International outside Washington, D.C.

In addition, LAX employees are drilled in what one insider called “the challenge philosophy,” under which all airport and airline employees are directed to challenge anyone in a secure area who is not wearing a badge.

To reinforce it, the Federal Aviation Administration routinely tries to trick officials by sneaking suspicious packages onto flights or by sending unidentified employees to lurk near ramps or in other secure areas. Fines and discipline can result if employees fail to catch the FAA plants.

Several airline officials said the philosophy is taken seriously, as is the FAA’s enforcement of it. As a result, they rank LAX among the nation’s safer facilities, along with San Francisco, Seattle and a few others.

Still, there are flaws in any system. At LAX, employees with certain security clearances can enter restricted areas at any time of day or night, just as the Miami workers did. Most employees would have no reason to be near a loading area while not on duty, but the security system did not prevent it in Miami and would not prevent it in Los Angeles, though the airport here theoretically would have a record of that movement.

The LAX badge system is being updated, with new computer functions being added, officials said. They declined to say precisely what the new system would add.

Despite LAX’s generally positive reputation, there have been slip-ups in recent years.

In 1997, a traveler was stopped at a security checkpoint carrying a shotgun, an assault weapon, 100 rounds of ammunition, knives, a fake sheriff’s badge, handcuffs and a ski mask. After a few hours of questioning, he was allowed to go and was not arrested because airport police failed to recognize that the assault weapon was illegal.

The bottom line, experts agreed: Even good security systems are subject to breakdowns, and there is little anyone can do to guard against the kind of conspiracy that prosecutors say they uncovered in Florida.

“In going in and going through the review of the airport, I am convinced that we are state of the art,” said Airport Commission President John Agoglia. “Having said that, LAX is a city of 50,000 people, plus all of the passengers who come in and out.”

There is no way, Agoglia added, to say with certainty that nothing can go wrong with so many employees and more than 60 million passengers a year.

The agency chiefly responsible for security at the airport is the Airport Police, a 220-officer organization with about 120 other security officers and civilian employees. Airport police handle a range of duties, from inspecting fences around the runways to monitoring metal detectors. The airport police are not supposed to handle major crimes or investigations; those fall to the Los Angeles Police Department, which has an office at the airport, or to one or more of the various federal agencies that post agents there.

In general, observers say communications between the various agencies are reasonably good, though the LAPD periodically complains that airport police are slow in notifying them of certain potential trouble spots.

For years, the LAPD sought to solve those complaints by absorbing the Airport Police into their department, part of the LAPD’s long-standing campaign to unify the city’s police agencies under a single command. That effort ran aground this year, however; the new City Charter written by a pair of citizen commissions and approved by voters in June explicitly provides for the Airport Police to keep their autonomy from LAPD.

Although the law enforcement agencies handle emergencies and other high-profile security matters at the airport, day-to-day issues are the responsibility not of any public organization but rather the airlines themselves.

That makes it hard to generalize about airport security, and in fact may suggest that security is better in some parts of the airport than in others.

Take the issue of wages, for instance. After much prodding, Mayor Richard Riordan joined union leaders in warning that paying only the minimum wage to front-line security workers may force them to put in too many hours and may affect the quality of their work--creating a host of potential dangers to passengers or others who use the airport.

Partly because of Riordan’s urging, United Airlines recently announced that it would raise the pay of those employees, giving them a so-called “living wage,” called that because it represents enough pay to keep a full-time worker out of poverty. In Los Angeles, that means security workers at United’s terminal make $8.76 an hour, well above the minimum wage of $5.75.

Advocates say a better-paid work force is a more stable one, and stability breeds confidence and competence.

But if better wages help produce better, more reliable workers--and, by extension, safer passengers--what about the rest of LAX? No other airline has followed United’s lead, so other workers continue to labor at minimum wage, with no paid days off or sick leave.

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist” to recognize the problem, said Madeline Janis-Aparicio, a leader of the Living Wage Coalition. “They create many more loose ends, many more opportunities for something not to go right.”

Low wages, she and others say, may also create another problem: more room for temptation.

Unhappy, underpaid workers may be especially vulnerable to appeals by drug smugglers or terrorists, both of whom often have cash at their disposal. Moreover, some of those criminals could trick workers into committing crimes more dangerous than they know they are being asked to commit.

For instance, Le Blanc said, an employee could be led to think that he is smuggling drugs, when in fact the package could contain a bomb.

“That should be a very serious concern,” Le Blanc said.

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Researcher John Beckham in The Times’ Chicago bureau contributed to this story.

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This story has been edited to reflect a correction to the original published text. It was an ex-USAir employee, not a fired PSA employee, that boarded a plane and attacked the pilot in 1987.

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