How Safe Can We Get?

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The suicidal behavior of the hijackers in the air will mandate a total revision of emergency procedures in the cabin. In the past, the idea was to try to keep hijackers calm and get the plane on the ground so negotiations could commence. Although airline staff members get annual training in handling hijackers, a kamikaze mission was not in any scenario. In the past, "if someone outside the cockpit was threatening to chop someone's head off, nine times out of 10, you'd open the door," says a Cathay Pacific pilot based in Hong Kong.

Some American pilots--and many are military vets--don't want to be holding just the yoke should that door open. Last week pilot chat sites were burning with a desire to rearm, a privilege revoked in 1987 when flight crews became subject to the same screening procedures as passengers, meaning they could no longer carry firearms. "It's probably the worst thing that ever happened," says Rick Givens, a retired USAir pilot and Air Force veteran of the Vietnam War.

As part of a security alert issued last week to its members, the Air Line Pilots Association recommended new measures to deal with any terrorist threat--depressurizing the aircraft or making drastic maneuvers to keep hijackers off balance; protecting the cockpit at all costs, regardless of what is happening in the rest of the plane; installing a dead bolt on the otherwise flimsy cabin door and eventually developing an impenetrable, high-tech portal that can still open in the event of an accident; and using an emergency crash ax if necessary as a "potential defensive weapon."

Even after recalibrating for the four fatal hijackings, air travel is still statistically safe in the U.S. But compared with the rest of the world, the U.S. takes the middle road when it comes to airport security. Israel's El Al still sets the highest standards (see box). Put up against Swiss-cheese operations such as those in the countries once part of the Soviet Union or Thailand, where corruption at the airport is endemic, the U.S. is a model of tightness. But compared with the top airports in Europe and Asia, the U.S. continues to lag. In India, only ticketed passengers can enter the terminal. Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur put international bags through a rigorous screening process. And in Europe, upstart budget carrier Ryanair bans most carry-on luggage.

A series of government oversight reports have served as a stinging indictment of the sorry performance here at home. Passenger screeners routinely miss about 20% of the weapons and explosives that FAA agents try to slip by them, according to the General Accounting Office (GAO). FAA agents have also found that it is easy to pose as an airport or airline employee or even as a law-enforcement agent.

From December 1998 to April 1999, Transportation Department investigators managed to breach airport security on 117 of 173 tries, a frightening 68% success rate--in some cases making it all the way to a seat on board just before takeoff. Investigators deliberately set off 25 emergency-exit alarms, only to find almost half of them ignored. They accomplished all this, according to the Inspector General's findings, with apparent ease, "piggybacking employees through doors, riding unguarded elevators, walking through concourse doors, gates and jet-bridges...and cargo facilities unchallenged, and driving through unmanned vehicle gates." The massive amount of construction going on at the nation's airports, including two of last week's suspect ones, Logan Airport in Boston and Newark airport in New Jersey, also gives slews of unauthorized workers room for mischief.

American Airlines, which flew two of the four jets commandeered, is facing a proposed $99,000 fine for violations on six flights in one day. The alleged transgressions, which American stresses were isolated and have been corrected, ranged from the mundane, such as forgetting to ask the two ridiculous screening questions, to the serious, such as flying luggage of passengers who weren't on board. American spokesman John Hotard says the airline spends tens of millions of dollars a year on security and that it "is the only carrier that has its own internal audit team that [every week] goes around various airports to audit not only American Airlines but our security operators."

The business of providing airport security is dominated by a few big companies, among them Argenbright Security, now owned by Securicor PLC of Britain, and Sweden's Securitas AB, which owns Burns International and Pinkerton. These firms win the business by being low bidder on contract proposals set out by the airlines. Here again an unfriendly dynamic may be at work. "Before Tuesday, the industry looked at security as a necessary evil that ate into a lot of its profitability," says Alan B. Bernstein, coo of Wackenhut, the private-security giant that pioneered passenger screening in the '70s. The company has been exiting the business because of the carriers' penny pinching.