Should the No-Fly List Be Grounded?

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The no-fly list of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is hitting increasingly bumpy skies. On the list are the names of people regarded as such serious threats that they should not be allowed on an airplane. Last month a United Airlines plane from London to Washington was forced to land in Maine because a barred passenger, Yusuf Islam, formerly known as the singer Cat Stevens, was onboard. Last week, in an unpublicized but potentially dangerous incident, a Royal Jordanian Airlines flight was allowed to take off from Amman with a Middle Eastern passenger whose name was on the list. Though U.S. officials discovered while the plane was en route that he was a no-fly passenger, the plane was permitted to land at its destination, Chicago's O'Hare airport.

Industry sources tell TIME that in the past few months there have been at least a dozen incidents of no-fly passengers mistakenly being allowed to fly. The situation is overstretching law-enforcement personnel, who must scramble to respond to each incident. The nofly list now has 20,000 names, and up to 300 new ones are added daily. There are dead people and people in prison on the list. At least 1,000 names are duplicates. Checking the unwieldy list has caused airline computer systems to crash. The TSA will not comment on specific incidents, but spokesman Mark Hatfield says the agency is hopeful its new passenger-prescreening program, Secure Flight, which begins next month, will help reduce the problems.