Airlines Share Responsibility : Ticket theft can be prevented by relatively simple means, such as the use of optical scanners--a solution supported by the American Society of Travel Agents.

Once again, Los Angeles leads the nation in a category that brings us no pride. Already the bank robbery capital of the country, we are now No. 1 in travel agency robberies as well.

This unwelcome distinction came to light earlier this month when an armed robbery of a Granada Hills travel agency ended in the fatal shooting of two suspected ticket thieves by a Los Angeles police unit. Police had been investigating a series of 25 travel agency robberies in the San Fernando Valley since January.

As detailed in a story in Sunday’s Times, most airline tickets are printed on “ticket stock” with specific serial numbers, but most airlines don’t keep track of serial numbers or, if they do, can’t track them efficiently. Thieves steal blank tickets, which are then forged and resold through a ring of counterfeiters and fences, often to illegal immigrants who are trying to escape detection. According to a report from the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, losses from stolen tickets cost the airlines $300 million a year.

Those losses are tiny compared with overall airline revenue, but there’s no putting a price on what travel agents are going through. Many tickets used to be taken in burglaries, but last year the number of armed robberies quadrupled.

Consider the terror Lady Moon, owner of Fly Moon Travel Services, experienced Aug. 14 when her Granada Hills business was robbed. Confronted with two armed men, one of them trembling and agitated, she so feared for her life that she slipped her wedding band into her back pocket so her husband could have it after her death. A customer who walked in during the robbery was hit in the head and thrown to the floor.

Is there a way to stop these burglaries, short of the LAPD’s controversial surveillance methods? Yes, says the GAO report. Ticket theft can be prevented by relatively simple means, such as the use of optical scanners--a solution supported by the American Society of Travel Agents, many of whose 11,000 members have testified before Congress and written to the Department of Transportation. But airline industry officials, who apparently have not been held at gunpoint and tied up by armed robbers lately, claim such technology is too costly to deploy at all terminals.

Too costly? British Airways began using scanners as a marketing tool to keep track of frequent-flier miles and revenue streams and, as a bonus, detected enough stolen tickets to pay for the technology.

As for the expense of deploying scanners at all terminals, how about terminals in Los Angeles, San Diego and Phoenix, where the airlines’ own industry organization says most flights with stolen tickets originate, or at Charlotte, Chicago, Atlanta or New York City, which the organization identifies, along with Los Angeles, as key destinations.

That airlines can do something to prevent this until now little-noticed rash of violence is apparent. Los Angeles may bear the distinction of having the most travel agency heists, but the stigma is on the airlines.