Air Travel

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And if the intelligence fails, as it did spectacularly in September, we know that it's smart to have cops in the sky as well as on the ground. That's why 10,000 air marshals are being hired to ride shotgun on domestic flights. There were only 37 marshals on duty on Sept. 11. Most of them were assigned to international flights.

Three decades ago flying was considered the pleasant privilege of those who could afford it. Then, with the onset of deregulation, it devolved into an endurance contest. Flying may yet become a privilege again, but for an entirely different reason. Americans might be forced to trade some privacy to fly. "For aviation, it is imperative that we focus more thoroughly on individual people as potential security threats and not just on things like carry-ons and checked baggage," says Carol Hallett, head of the Air Transport Association, the industry's trade group.

That means smoking out the bad guys before they reach the planes. To the airlines, this suggests using newly trained screeners to conduct criminal profiling. But profiling is still a hot button, even with an Administration that has asked for--and received--increased investigative power. "Absolutely not," Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta recently told 60 Minutes. Terrorism experts say profiling is absolutely necessary, but Mineta, who as a child was interned in a wartime camp for Japanese Americans, won't budge.

Improved security will also require the use of technology to verify passenger identities and control access. Garvey says a smart-card program is one of the options that should be considered, on the assumption that knowing exactly who is getting on the plane is crucial. "We have to figure out where best to focus our security resources," she says.

Will people willingly give up personal information to move more quickly and safely through the air traffic system? Some frequent flyers already do. U.S. airlines such as Delta and American are subtly providing speed lanes with separate security lines for well-known premium passengers. Some 2,000 U.S. and British citizens who fly British Atlantic and Virgin Airways between America and Britain will be able to pass through immigration without stopping. They have provided personal and employment information and signed on to an iris-recognition database. Iris recognition, which will go into operation mid-January at London's Heathrow, is a technology that essentially relies on the unique patterns of a person's iris like a fingerprint.

As the big airlines hemorrhaged money and talked about the need to get even bigger, the small airlines discovered the safety issue. Within days of the disaster, Jonathan Ornstein, the CEO of Mesa Airlines, a commuter carrier based in Phoenix, announced that he was hiring his own corps of unarmed security personnel. Given their tiny fleets, enthusiastic employees and more nimble management, outfits such as JetBlue Airways and Frontier Airlines redesigned and reinforced cockpit doors within two weeks. The big carriers will need months, at a minimum. "Past practice has been to wait and see what others will do," explains Thomas Nunn, Frontier's director of safety. "This was no time to wait." Both JetBlue and Frontier are also making plans to install cameras to monitor the passenger cabin from the cockpit.