Word: airport
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Among other measures, the 1990 legislation required the FAA to speed up explosives-detection research, to heighten security checks on airport personnel and to release passenger manifests within three hours of a crash. The deadline set by Congress: November 1993. The FAA failed to adhere to that timetable, blaming Congress for setting overly stringent standards and requiring complicated tests of the new technologies. But that same year--five full years after Lockerbie--the inspector general's office of the Department of Transportation released a report blasting the FAA's overall security program. It is the only such report that...
...report states baldly that airport security was still "seriously flawed" and "not adequate" at the nation's riskiest airports, which include New York City's John F. Kennedy. While the FAA had rated the four airports visited by its inspectors as "good to very good," undercover agents from the inspector general's office reached dramatically different conclusions. In 15 out of 20 attempts to gain entry to supposedly secure areas, agents had little trouble: they got into aircraft-parking areas, baggage areas, and one agent managed to slip an unarmed hand grenade through a metal detector...
...General Accounting Office too had made its security concerns public well before last week's crash. A grim report released in March noted that air terrorism remains a grave concern, and that "terrorists were aware both of airport vulnerabilities and how existing security measures could be defeated." After being briefed last week on these concerns, including those raised by the inspector general's new report, Republican Senator Larry Pressler, chairman of the Senate transportation panel, was dismayed, and acknowledged that he was himself "nervous" about flying. "There's got to be an understanding that we need better airport security, that...
Travelers at international airports have long had that understanding. In London, travelers are patted down, and the government has recently ordered that all checked incoming international baggage be X-rayed, even if the passengers are catching a connecting domestic flight. In most Arab countries, passengers run a gauntlet of 14 checkpoints before boarding. Ironically, at Hellenikon airport in Athens--notorious for uneven security and a target of U.S. investigators--passengers, including those who boarded the doomed TWA 747 bound for J.F.K. last week, are screened several times before they board: by Greek airport officials and by airline officials...
...requires that all carry-on baggage for international flights be inspected, that all checked luggage be matched with a passenger, and that checked luggage be X-rayed. But a former top security official with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which oversees Kennedy airport, says that to save time, baggage checked at curbside is often taken directly to the cargo area without going through an X-ray machine. U.S. domestic flights still do not require bags and passengers to travel together--even after the CIA issued a warning last summer that there were signs of increased terrorist...