Sitting Ducks at LAX

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, airline travelers have become more or less resigned to standing in lines. If waiting for checked luggage to undergo new scrutiny and for passengers and carry-on bags to get more than a cursory scan keeps bombs and hijackers off planes, who can really complain?

OK, plenty of people. And perhaps unbeknown to them, it turns out that inconvenience is not the only problem. As air travel rebounds toward pre-9/11 levels, the growing queues make tempting ground-level targets.

A Rand Corp. study on security at Los Angeles International Airport lacks only the phrase “sitting ducks.” Arriving passengers were after all the targets of an attack planned for December 1999 by Al Qaeda terrorist Ahmed Ressam. Customs agents luckily arrested the “millennium bomber” as he crossed the Washington state border from Canada. According to the Rand report, he had planned to use a luggage bomb in the skycap or check-in lines.

Today, passenger lines are longer and just as vulnerable at airports nationwide, according to a separate report by the Government Accountability Office. The lines at LAX have become fodder for the L.A. mayoral race, though for now they are generating more rhetorical fire than reasonable fixes.

The Rand report claims the problem at LAX can be fixed quickly and relatively cheaply by hiring more skycaps, ticketing agents and security screeners. Mayor James K. Hahn, who is pushing an $11-billion airport renovation, says he agrees with Rand on the urgency of shortening lines but defends the airport director’s position that doing so would be neither quick nor easy. The LAX argument is this: Debt-ridden airlines are too broke to hire additional ticket-counter staff, and the number of airport screeners is capped by the federal government. Further, the cramped airport doesn’t have room for new counters or scanning stations.

City Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa, Hahn’s challenger in the May 17 runoff, accuses the mayor of “summarily dismissing” Rand’s recommendation as a way to bolster his more costly renovation. But Villaraigosa is vague about how he would find the money or the room to shorten lines. He opposes even a scaled-back compromise on LAX renovation that was adopted by the rest of the City Council, instead calling for the same regional airport system everyone supports and no one has figured out how to create. That isn’t exactly a quick fix either.

If Rand’s calculations seem a bit off the cuff (a 1% increase in screening staff would “significantly” reduce lines), LAX’s computer-modeled calculations and all-or-nothing goal of reducing waits to a mere minute appear excessively fussy. Surely the city, the federal government and the airlines, acting together, could find ways of shortening if not eliminating long waits in line.

In the meantime, passengers can do their part. Use the check-in kiosks that airlines are installing to reduce ticket-counter congestion. Don’t pack so much stuff. And by all means try uncrowded, city-owned Ontario International Airport, 35 miles east of downtown Los Angeles. Any additional driving time will be more than offset by shorter lines.