Excess Baggage

The majority of flights are on time. Passenger complaints are down. Most days, security lines move at a tolerable pace. In short, things aren’t that bad at U.S. airports. And, most days, America’s business travelers are experiencing fewer hurdles than they did in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

That’s what we found March 4, when we shadowed four veteran road warriors flying on routine business trips. (See related stories, Pages S4-5.)

A big reason for the smooth transits is simple: There are fewer planes and passengers today than a year ago.

As of Jan. 31, there were about 10% fewer people boarding planes than in January 2001. This has helped improve the on-time arrival of most flights and has helped curb the number of complaints.

But the real test is to come. Airport security has been in the hands of the federal government for barely a month, and the first order of business is to hire and train a new security force and have a trustworthy method for screening checked baggage--without increasing the hassle factor for travelers.

Meanwhile, passenger ranks are expected to swell as we head into the summer vacation season.

Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta, mindful that the air travel disruptions have affected business travelers the most, told the travel industry in a recent speech that “the one-day business trip needs to be viable” and described a vision of a world-class screening process “without requiring a wait of longer than 10 minutes.”

But as most frequent business travelers know, that day is a long way off.

Within the first two weeks after the new Transportation Security Administration took over the airports Feb. 17, terminals in Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Chicago, Buffalo, N.Y., and Boston had to be evacuated after it was discovered that some passengers had passed through inoperative metal detectors.

At Los Angeles International Airport and O’Hare International in Chicago, unplugged equipment forced the evacuation of 10,000 passengers in all and affected more than 440 flights.

That excludes other evacuations and countless security sweeps made necessary because careless passengers have packed dangerous items, behaved suspiciously or left baggage unattended.

“These terminal evacuations are causing literally tens of millions of dollars in damage,” said Terry Trippler, an airline regulations consultant and head of Minneapolis-based Trippler & Associates. “We’ll never know the real cost [of those evacuations] to individual lives.”

The disruptions have added enough hassle to tip the scales for Tim Winship, editor and publisher of FrequentFlier.com. The Los Angeles resident, who spent 20 years developing airline and hotel loyalty programs before launching his Web site for frequent fliers, has decided flying is “a lot less worthwhile than it used to be.”

“Until these problems are fixed, a lot of people are going to tone down their travel. And it’s not like it was all that great before,” Winship said.

The first wave of newly hired and trained security screeners will arrive at airport checkpoints May 1; all positions are to be filled--and all contract labor phased out--by Nov. 19. Congress wants all screening of checked baggage done by explosive-detection system machines by Dec. 31, a deadline the Transportation Department says is impossible to meet. And already there are money problems.

In January, Transportation Department Inspector General Kenneth Mead told the House aviation subcommittee that “the cost of good security will be substantially greater than most had anticipated.”

Mead’s figures put the tab for fiscal 2002 between $6.2 billion and $7 billion. Yet the projected revenue for fiscal 2002, Mead said, is $2 billion to $2.3 billion--about half of which is to come from a new $2.50-per-passenger security fee.

Amid the uncertainty, business travelers apparently plan to soldier on. A recent survey by the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics and the Travel Industry Assn. of America found that more regular business travelers plan to increase their travel this year.

“Security now is better than it was on Sept. 10, and it will get better,” consultant Trippler said. “But we have only begun to see the tip of the iceberg of problems.”

Darryl Jenkins, director of the Aviation Institute at George Washington University in Washington, said travelers’ patience could reach a breaking point.

“There’s a point at which everyone’s goodwill will dissipate,” he said.

That most likely will come in June, said Jenkins, who logs 50 to 100 trips a year. He predicts that the delays caused by thunderstorm season in the Midwest and South, combined with the usual increase in summer travelers, will make for short tempers.

“For old-timers like myself, all of us know better than to go anywhere near a plane in June,” he said.

Among the thorniest issues the government must deal with are screening checked baggage, improving the flow of passengers through security checkpoints and the possible implementation of traveler identification systems.

For checked baggage, Congress wants about 2,200 explosive- detection systems in the country’s 400-plus commercial airports by Dec. 31. At last count, 180 of the machines, which are certified by the Federal Aviation Administration, were in place at 53 airports; only 165 of them were working. InVision Technologies Inc. and L-3 Communications Holdings Inc., the two firms that make the approved machines, have said they couldn’t meet the deadline even if they had all the orders, which they don’t.

And airport authorities wonder where they will put them. Install the SUV-sized machines in airport lobbies, and they’ll crowd out the very passengers who need to check their bags. Install the machines behind the scenes within the baggage processing system, and airports will have to be reconfigured.

“I think that there are going to be headaches along the way,” said David Plavin, president of the Airports Council International-North America. Transition from the old, familiar system to one with new demands will be imperfect, he said. “You don’t do something on this scale and get it right the first time.”

To fulfill the requirement of screening all checked baggage, the Transportation Security Administration is using the explosives- detection machines it has or bomb-sniffing dogs, which also are in short supply. Mostly, though, the TSA is relying on the airlines to conduct so-called positive passenger bag matching to screen the estimated 900 million to 1 billion bags checked in the U.S. each year.

The baggage matching means each airline assures that a checked bag does not fly unless the passenger it belongs to boards the flight. But this matching applies only to the first segment of a flight. The baggage of the 15% of U.S. passengers, or about 90 million annually, who make connecting flights is not being positively matched.

At least one company has a way around the system. New York-based Universal Express Inc., which owns two baggage shipping companies, is doing a modest but growing business transporting about 300 or 400 pieces of luggage a month through its Virtual Bellhop service, said Chief Executive Richard Altomare.

Virtual Bellhop acts as a luggage courier, picking up bags from homes or offices, shipping them via cargo planes and delivering them to hotels or other locations.

At security checkpoints, the TSA has done an about-face. The agency allowed the airlines to reinstate VIP lines that feed into security checkpoints at hub airports only a few days after it had revoked the practice. Everyone goes through the same screening checkpoints, but elite fliers wait to do so in shorter lines.

Mineta has said VIP lines were one way the TSA would be working with the airlines, “experimenting with existing methods that screen frequent travelers more efficiently at passenger checkpoints.”

Convenience--and helping the airlines hang on to valued customers--is not the only reason.

“Anything that will increase the efficiency will increase the security,” said Jenkins of George Washington University, noting that passengers are most at risk while standing in line. “The vulnerability is that long lines are easy targets.”

Some believe that a traveler identification system would solve the problem. Others fear an invasion of privacy. The Transportation Department is taking the middle ground, saying it is “open to some type of ‘trusted traveler ID card’ system,” as long as it doesn’t reduce the level of security.

Even so, companies such as Visionics Corp. and Identix Inc., which sell fingerprint scanners, are taking orders from airports around the country--if only to conduct the required criminal background checks on employees.

And Logan International in Boston, earmarked by the government as a test site for new technology, is one of at least three airports testing a face-recognition system from Visage Technology, the American Assn. of Airport Executives said.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking. And there’s a sense that there’s no margin for error.

Winship of FrequentFlier.com said he is skeptical about the future of airport security.

“We still read about those who have gotten through with guns or scissors,” he said. “And you have to figure that for every one they find there may be 10 others that we don’t know about.”

Consultant Trippler said the lines, waits and evacuations could “destroy the air transportation system as we know it.”

“If we can’t get John and Mary from the front door to the airplane in less than two hours,” he said, “we’ve got problems.”