Tighter Airport Security Is Just a Flight of Fancy

The missive came from United Airlines pilot Richard Bush. Passengers are being fooled, he said, if they think security has been significantly tightened since Sept. 11.

“We are doing silly things,” wrote Bush, who flies out of Los Angeles. While passengers and flight crews are having disposable shavers confiscated at security checkpoints, he later told me by phone, ground crews are still boarding planes without being screened at most airports he’s been to.

“My complaints have fallen on deaf ears at UAL,” says Bush. “The flying public should be outraged!”

Lax security, rude treatment and idiotic policies. I could write a book from the information flummoxed fliers--and the occasional pilot--are sending my way.

Despite improvements since Sept. 11, and despite the fact that air travel is statistically safer than driving on the Hollywood Freeway, airport and airline security are still full of holes.

“Flying has never been safer since Sept. 11,” California Gov. Gray Davis said the other day in a witless photo op in Sacramento, 16 National Guard troops standing behind him.

Well how reassuring is that? Wouldn’t you rather hear that flying is safer than it was before Sept. 11?

If so, stationing National Guard troops inside terminals with M-16 assault rifles is not going to get it done, no matter how many toenail clippers they confiscate. In fact, arming these guys--if the guns are really loaded--is possibly the dumbest thing I’ve heard in six months.

Does anyone really expect a hijacker to telegraph his intentions by rushing a checkpoint inside a terminal? If so, do we want him in a position to possibly grab the soldier’s weapon, beat him over the head with it, and turn the rifle on a crowd of civilians?

This is idiotic window dressing; a security gesture no more reassuring than being asked if you packed your own bags. It’s dangerous, too, in the sense that it diverts attention from what’s really needed to make flying safer.

Airport and airline security are in need of a complete overhaul.

“Now is the time to rethink everything,” says Peter Walsh, vice president of Mercer Management Consulting and an expert on global airport and airline security.

There are holes at every sector, says Walsh, and the public’s going to have to decide whether, post-Sept. 11, it’s comfortable with Band-Aid fixes.

Everything and everybody who comes into contact with the airport or a plane has to be subjected to stricter scrutiny, says Walsh. That means crews, passengers, cargo, mail, baggage and food supplies.

“Most security in the U.S., including that for baggage and cargo, is based on the simple premise that nobody would get on a flight wishing to blow it up,” says Walsh.

But that changed Sept. 11, so the concern goes way beyond hijacking now.

On most domestic flights in the United States, checked luggage is not examined, and it doesn’t go through a scanner before getting tossed into the belly of the plane, either.

Given the enduring threat of terrorism on our shores, is there anyone out there who doesn’t want baggage scanners installed immediately, even if it means your ticket will cost a few more bucks and it’ll take a little longer to board your flight?

In the meantime, instead of posing with National Guard troops and telling us how safe flying is, Gov. Davis ought to get them over to baggage handling, where they can actually do some good.

Over the long term, virtually every security position ought to be federalized, Walsh says, because if that responsibility were left to airlines, they’d cut costs whenever economic pressures hit.

Israel’s El Al Airlines spends 8% of its revenue on security, 75% of which is subsidized by the government, according to Walsh. American airliners, by contrast, pay 0.2% or 0.3% of their revenue toward security.

I don’t know what the peanuts cost them, but it’s got to be in the same ballpark. And yet, as Democratic U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman of Los Angeles points out, none of that $15-billion bailout for the airline industry was earmarked for security.

Using El Al as a model also means “shoring up passenger profiling” and “monitoring the actions of people with hostile intentions,” says Walsh.

As for the Federal Aviation Administration, it needs to establish tougher standards and enforce them like a bulldog.

The cost for all of this will be monumental, and we’re not talking about an overnight solution, says Walsh. Flying will be safer in the end, but more of a hassle. That means fewer fliers, and of the 10 major airlines in business today, Walsh expects only five or six to survive.

I, for one, am all for an overhaul. No, it won’t be foolproof. We’re way beyond guarantees of anything now. But given what’s happened, we can’t afford to do the job halfway.

“Capt. Jason Dahl of Flight 93 was an acquaintance of mine for many years,” says Capt. Bush of United. “I have a wife and daughter I need to assure of my safety. . . . I want to get this industry and this country moving again.”

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Steve Lopez can be reached at steve.lopez@latimes.com.