Real Danger at Airport Lies Back With the Bags

“You wanna go get some water?” National Guardsman Manuel Garavito asked his buddy at Burbank Airport.

“Yeah,” said Scot Hebbon, and the two of them strolled from Terminal B to Terminal A in green camouflage, toting M-16 rifles.

“I’d rather be in the Middle East than guarding the Burbank Airport,” said Garavito, who supports a family of six and is on leave from a job that paid him twice what this one does. But a good soldier follows orders without question.

Several other National Guard members were stationed beyond the metal detectors at Terminal A, fighting off boredom as best they could. One stood watch in front of the restroom, one chatted with a passenger, another talked to an airline employee.

If there has been a bigger misuse of manpower in recent history, it does not immediately come to mind.

Going to fetch water might rank as the day’s big event for these unfortunate sentries, and the same goes for thousands of their brethren stationed at airports across the nation. So I think it’s only fair to pose a question:

What in the world are they doing there?

Chances are you know the answer. They are there as sleight of hand, to make you feel like something significant has been done to ensure your safety.

They are there at taxpayer expense to pump money to airline companies that have doggedly refused to pay for legitimate security upgrades.

I could be wrong, but it doesn’t seem to me that since Sept. 11, the chief concern is the would-be hijacker who shoots his way through a terminal, crashes the metal detectors and commandeers a parked plane.

So here’s an idea. If we’re going to indefinitely deploy National Guard troops at airports, can we use them as something other than props?

They could patrol the perimeter of the airport and inspect service vehicles.

They could run metal detection wands over ground crews before they board planes.

They could examine baggage.

Gerald Kauvar, a Rand Corp. analyst and staff director five years ago for the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security, tells me that less than 5% of all checked baggage passes through bomb-detection scanners on domestic flights. There aren’t enough scanners available, and those that do exist are used only sparingly.

You read correctly. Ninety-five percent of what’s in the cargo hold has not been looked at. So where do we put the National Guard? In the places where they’re least needed, standing watch over airport workers who are already scanning carry-on bags, however imperfectly.

Kauvar also points out that domestic airlines fought a proposed system to make sure no one checks a bag and then walks away without boarding the plane. It was too costly, and it would take too long, the airlines argued after Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing 270 people.

So here I am at Burbank Airport, where National Guard troops are standing around wondering what to do with themselves while hundreds of unexamined bags are carted out to planes.

Here they are with their M-16s over their shoulders while tons of unchecked mail and cargo are loaded onto planes.

Here’s yet another pilot from yet another major airliner calling me on the telephone to say these are the very things that concern flight crews most.

Mary Schiavo, former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation, says she’s tired of hearing from the airlines that security upgrades will create expense and delays that the public won’t tolerate.

“I think we’re being bullied by the airlines right now,” she said.

Schiavo, who was traveling on business, called me from Baltimore-Washington International Airport, where National Guard troops were stationed at terminal entrances and exits.

At her gate, she looked out on the tarmac, where unchecked bags and parcels were being loaded onto planes.

“Just get the scanners,” she said with a combination of fatigue and dismay. “I’m astonished we didn’t immediately say enough is enough. How many lives do we have to lose before we say we’re going to check every bag that goes on a plane?”

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Columns by Steve Lopez appear Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at steve.lopez@latimes.com