Airports May End 2 Security Questions About Baggage

Airport passengers may not be asked much longer whether they packed their own bags and, starting right away, they will be allowed to take drinks through security checkpoints.

For the last 16 years, ticket agents have been required to ask passengers two security questions: “Has anyone unknown to you asked you to carry an item on this flight?” and “Have any of the items you are traveling with been out of your immediate control since the time you packed them?”

There is no hard evidence the queries have prevented a hijacking or bombing. Many passengers question the value of the tactic, as anyone with something to hide presumably would not answer honestly.

The Transportation Security Administration, the agency created after Sept. 11 to oversee airport security, is seeking ways to make travel less onerous. Among the considerations is getting rid of the questions, according to TSA chief James M. Loy.

“A review is underway,” Loy said Thursday at a news conference in San Francisco. He said it was part of an examination of a larger body of regulations and that a decision won’t take long.

The Air Transport Assn., which represents big airlines, would welcome the change, spokesman Michael Wascom said.

“All passengers do not pose equal security threats,” Wascom said. “Why should we continue to ask these questions of everyone? We should be focusing on people who are higher security risks.”

Billie Vincent, a former Federal Aviation Administration security chief, said the U.S. requirement originally included five or six questions written 16 years ago after two incidents in Europe involving men who deceived their girlfriends into carrying explosives onto planes.

In 1986, a security guard for Israeli airline El Al questioned a pregnant Irish woman at London’s Heathrow Airport and discovered her Jordanian fiance had duped her into carrying a bomb onto an Israeli jet.

“What was started as very meaningful became essentially irrelevant,” Vincent said. In the United States, the questions were reduced to two and people were never trained to interrogate passengers properly, he said.

A trained interrogator would ask simple questions, looking for reasons to ask further questions, such as shiftiness or conflicting responses, said David Stempler, president of the Air Travelers Assn.

“El Al still asks those questions, but it’s still part of a larger process where they’re interrogating passengers, which is what we need to do in this country,” he said.

Loy, who succeeded John W. Magaw last month as TSA chief, said the agency wants to balance customer service and security.

He said Thursday that passengers will be allowed to carry beverages in paper or foam cups through metal detectors.

The new policy requires plastic, glass, metal and ceramic containers to be sealed and put through the X-ray screening machine. An open can of soda won’t be allowed through a checkpoint, but a bottle of soda with a top that can be sealed will.

Screeners are forbidden to ask passengers to eat food or drink a beverage as part of a security procedure. The policy was changed June 24 after a woman said a security guard at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport forced her to drink from three bottles of her own breast milk to demonstrate the liquid posed no threat to other passengers.