How Secure Are The Skies?

The Bush Administration has yet to take a position on the bill, but several aviation-security experts have. "The threat in the U.S. is no different this week than it was last week," says Steve Luckey, head of the Air Line Pilots Association Security Committee. "We shouldn't overreact to a threat that is still overshadowed by many others." On the eve of the two-year anniversary of 9/11, many commercial carriers still do not electronically screen all their checked bags for explosives, and compared with a bomb in a suitcase, shoulder-fired missiles are a highly unpredictable means of wreaking havoc. Many of the missiles for sale on the black market were stolen from the collapsing U.S.S.R. more than a decade ago, and, like any mechanical device, their accuracy and performance have degraded. Shoulder-fired missiles also require a fair bit of marksmanship, and it is hard to practice bringing down a plane without detection. "If they were so easy to use," says an airline-security expert, "they would have been. It's as simple as that." But like many other aspects of terrorism, it has to work only once to produce the intended result.