Harder Issues for Air Safety

With more sky marshals boarding commercial flights and stronger doors on cockpits, U.S. skies are certainly safer than they were last fall. Let’s not kid ourselves, though. As the seven shutdowns of entire terminals due to security lapses at Los Angeles International Airport in the last two weeks have shown, nerves are still jittery and Washington’s new Transportation Security Administration still has glaring safety holes to close.

Most of the first reforms, including the sky marshals and the new doors, were widely supported. But President Bush should lend his weight to at least two more controversial ones:

* Training security screeners to effectively use the high-tech scanners installed at major airports to detect explosives and weapons in luggage. This month the government began recruiting some 30,000 federal security screeners at salaries from $13 to $20 an hour--significantly higher than the fast-food wages that baggage screeners had been earning. However, Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta has yet to explain how his agency will train screeners to use the new CTX scanners--complex instruments similar to the CAT scanners that hospital workers spend years learning how to use. Lack of training, not an instrument flaw, is the fundamental reason why the scanners failed anonymous testing by the Federal Aviation Administration.

* Giving pilots more tools to foil hijack attempts. In the last few weeks, hundreds of pilots have posted anguished complaints on the FAA’s Web site. They allege that the agency has shrugged off their pleas for permission to carry firearms since 1999, when a delirious passenger barged into the cockpit of an Alaska Airlines jet and wrestled with the captain and co-pilot. As one pilot wrote anonymously, referring to the fact that U.S. combat jets are now on patrol ready to shoot down hijacked airplanes: “Arm the pilots. I would rather risk a stray shot in the cabin than a Sidewinder [missile] up the engine exhaust.”

Airlines and Mineta adamantly oppose pilot firearms, fearing that bullets would dangerously damage planes and prompt lawsuits if passengers were struck. The airlines and the FAA should at least let pilots carry tasers--devices that can deliver high-voltage jolts to temporarily disable attackers.

There is much to reassure travelers in the progress toward safer skies. Still, the raw frustration of the pilots’ comments to the FAA shows that the people who know the most are far from satisfied. Cockpit guns may not be the answer, but the pilots should not be forced to fend off intruders with their bare hands.