Airports Quickly Heighten Security

Jolted by a weekend incident on a transatlantic flight, airport security agents across the country began implementing a new federal order on Monday to check for weapons in the shoes of travelers.

The Federal Aviation Administration issued the new safety guidelines to airlines Sunday, in part to bolster public confidence in an aviation system still reeling from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks by suicide hijackers.

In France, meanwhile, authorities announced a heightened security program Monday after the lapse that allowed a man carrying a British passport to board a flight from Paris to Miami with what investigators say were explosives hidden in his sneakers. Passengers tackled the man after a flight attendant caught him apparently trying to ignite the substance with a match.

French officials said they would increase the number of police, customs agents, soldiers and other security personnel at their airports, and place more bomb-sniffing dogs at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris.

Officials from the French transportation, justice, defense, interior and finance ministries also held an emergency telephone conference on Christmas Eve to discuss speeding up a security overhaul that began after the attacks in the United States more than three months ago.

The suspect in Saturday’s incident, identified as Richard C. Reid, was arraigned in federal court in Boston and ordered held until a bail hearing Friday.

American Airlines Flight 63, which was forced to land in Boston after the disruption, carried 185 passengers and 12 crew members.

While Reid’s motives remained unclear, his actions caused another security crackdown at airports in the United States and elsewhere in an effort to prevent catastrophe during the busy holiday travel period.

Passengers on Monday were asked to remove their shoes at many security checkpoints. At Logan International Airport in Boston, for example, passengers were required to take off their shoes and pass them through metal detectors. Inspectors also looked closely at the shoes after they emerged from the machines.

“Have these shoes ever had a heel replaced, or any other work done on them?” one Logan security employee asked a traveler as he scrutinized the footwear. The employee then squeezed both shoes and looked inside them.

Most airport passengers in Los Angeles and Orange counties were willing to pay the price for increased security: occasionally longer lines. Snarls appeared in some places but not in others.

At an American Airlines checkpoint at Los Angeles International Airport on Monday morning, few passengers were being asked to take off their shoes and send them through the X-ray machines.

But at Southwest Airlines and U.S. Airways, about half the passengers were asked to shed their shoes, and this had a considerable effect on the lines. A security supervisor said the line to go through the screening machines was backed up 45 minutes to an hour.

While FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown declined to discuss security directives, details of which are not released to the public, she said the agency had previously warned airlines about the possibility of weapons in shoes. The new order, she said, gave them “more precise instructions” to handle such threats.

“Those measures,” Brown said, “may or may not be obvious to passengers.”

But one thing was obvious to the flying public and security experts: The shoe incident exposed another hole in a system that has been punctured time and again in recent years--and with devastating effect in the Sept. 11 strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Jeff Zack, spokesman for the Assn. of Flight Attendants, which represents 50,000 flight attendants from 26 airlines, said that since Sept. 11, flight crews have been targeted for extensive searches that routinely required them to hand over their footwear for examination, while passengers were rarely subjected to the same level of scrutiny.

“There was a reason they had flight attendants taking off their shoes,” Zack said. “The point is that flight attendants shouldn’t be the only ones. It needs to be applied more extensively. . . . This guy [Reid] had all the indicators of someone who should have raised a red flag.”

A federal law enacted last month requires the use of bomb-detection machines to screen all checked baggage by the end of 2002. But the law has no explicit requirement to use machinery to screen every passenger from head to foot for traces of explosives.

Technology exists to detect explosives on people and in hand luggage, but security experts say it is not consistently applied and is not foolproof.

The most commonly used devices are “trace detectors”--equipment that can be found in most major airports alongside the X-ray machines at the checkpoints where carry-on bags are screened.

Baggage screeners wipe the surface of bags or other suspected items with a specially designed filter or cloth, then place the sample in the trace detector, which can alert them to the presence of explosive material in as little as five seconds.

The devices are capable of detecting extremely small amounts of explosives. The problem, said aviation security consultant Robert Monetti, is that the airlines don’t use the technology as frequently as they should to wipe down hand luggage. And he said they don’t have any procedures in place for sniffing out explosives on passengers’ bodies or clothing.

“The FAA doesn’t require that airports wipe down passengers, so they’re not going to do it,” said Monetti, who became an airline security expert and consultant after losing his son, Rick, in the 1988 explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. “It’s another gigantic hole in our aviation security . . . [that] they could fix tomorrow if they wanted to.”

Even if trace detection technology were applied more liberally, it has limitations, because carefully sealed explosives may not leave sufficient residue.

Some experts said the problem highlighted in the weekend incident was simply human error.

Gerry Kauvar, who was staff director in 1996-97 for a White House commission on aviation security, noted that Reid had tried to board a flight the previous day, but was subjected to additional screening because of questions about his passport and other concerns.

As a result, Kauvar said, steps could have--and should have--been taken to check Reid thoroughly for explosives on his second, successful attempt to board American Airlines Flight 63 the next day.

“It’s not a loophole in technology or regulation,” Kauvar said. “It was a laxity.”

As officials redoubled their efforts Monday to instill public confidence in airline security, some passengers complained, but others were more patient. Few, if any, seemed reluctant to cooperate.

Neil Katz, on his way to Houston from LAX, said he had been waiting 50 minutes in the security line, but he was cheerful.

“It’s not too bad anyway,” Katz said. “I only had to wait an hour to check my luggage before this.”

One Southwest Airlines passenger said it took longer to get through security at LAX (an hour) than it did to fly to San Jose (55 minutes).

Security personnel at John Wayne Airport in Orange County also began random screenings of passengers’ shoes Monday morning. Departing travelers, who were singled out for scrutiny, had their footwear X-rayed or checked with hand-held metal detectors.

Despite the inconvenience, passengers seemed resigned to the additional safety measures. In contrast to the situation at LAX, travelers at John Wayne encountered just 20- to 25-minute delays before clearing security--a wait that had disappeared by early afternoon.

“Safety is the most important thing to me. If we have to have our shoes checked it doesn’t bother me a bit,” said Joe Bray of Dallas, who was flying home with his wife, Cheryl.

*

Times staff writers Sebastian Rotella, Robert Patrick, Lee Romney, Marla Dickerson, Josh Meyer, Kenneth Reich, Stephanie Stassel and Dan Weikel contributed to this report.