Fwd: PHIL BROWN MAKES THE NEWS
Jim Dickson
Airport Security Gap: The Workers
By Susan Carey of Wall Street Journal
AUDIENCE: 1,717,363
DATE: 01-28-2015
-- Available PDF --
A trio of recent incidents is fueling new scrutiny of U.S. airport security procedures that allow nearly a million workers nationwide - including baggage handlers, mechanics and aircraft cleaners - access to airport facilities without routine screening. Checks
of such workers have long been put off because of funding and other concerns. But the experience of the two major U.S. airports - in Miami and Orlando - that do comprehensive screening suggests the costs and logistical hurdles are manageable. Last month, prosecutors
charged two men, a former Delta Air Lines Inc. employee and a then-current Delta baggage handler, in an alleged gunrunning scheme involving the use of the employee's access privileges to sneak firearm some loaded - into Atlanta's airport, then carry them in
aircraft cabins on flights to New York.
This month a Federal Aviation Administration safety inspector was found with a gun in his carry-on bag when he arrived in New York from Atlanta, the FAA said. The agency said it has suspended a program that allowed such inspectors to bypass security screenings, and the employee is under investigation. And on Jan. 26, a criminal complaint lodged in U.S. District Court in Atlanta by the Federal Bureau of Investigation alleged that a Delta gate agent illegally boarded a flight to Paris after circumventing passenger screening by using his employee badge that gave him access to secure areas of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
The agent was arrested before the flight left. Delta said the employee has been suspended pending the investigation. The episodes have spotlighted long-standing concerns of some experts about airport access systems for employees, and the question of whether airports - and ultimately taxpayers, airlines and fliers - may need to pay potentially billions of dollars to beef up security. Jeh Johnson, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, the Transportation Security Administration's parent agency, has asked an aviation-security advisory committee to conduct a comprehensive review of airport security, a DHS spokesman said.
An estimated 950,000 employees of airlines, airports, vendors, concessionaires and regulators have access to secure areas through around 18,000 access points at about 450 U.S. airports where the TSA conducts passenger screening. If the workers pass criminal-background and threat-assessment checks by the TSA and its designated partners, they receive badges allowing unsupervised entry to sensitive areas. A 2008 report by the TSA's Inspector General said these insiders represent "one of the greatest threats to aviation." But the system has remained, largely because of concerns that routine checks of these people - some individuals would require multiple checks a day coming and going would inflate costs and bog down airport operations. According to a Government Accountability Office report, the TSA in 2008 tested enhanced screening of workers at several airports.
The contractor for the test concluded that random screening appeared roughly as effective in identifying contraband as 100% worker screening, and would be cheaper: between $1.8 billion and $6.6 billion for the first year, compared with $5.7 billion to $14.9 billion for total employee screening. The TSA's total budget for the current year is $7.3 billion. Experts say it would take an act of Congress or a sweeping TSA directive to mandate 100% airport worker screening. The problem is who would pay for it. Nevertheless, Miami International Airport and Orlando International Airport both say they have instituted 100% employee screening. The costs indirectly are borne by the airlines and airport concessionaires, through higher rents and landing fees. Miami, which has 30,500 workers with access to cargo and ramp areas, began its screening in 1999. Officials there acted after authorities uncovered a massive guns-and-drugs smuggling scheme involving 58 mostly airline and catering workers.
Lauren Stover, Miami Airport's security director, said the facility has reduced the number of employee pedestrian entrances to the airport's ramp areas to four from 34, which were all unmanned. The four entrances now are staffed by security guards from an outside company. The cost is $3.1 million a year, a small part of the $955 million the airport operator, Miami-Dade County Aviation Department, spent in 2013. "We have intercepted drugs, large sums of money, guns, large knives and a machete," Ms. Stover said of the worker checks. Orlando began its project in 2007 after two employees of a Delta commuter unit were discovered smuggling firearms and marijuana on a flight to San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Phillip Brown, the airport director, said Orlando has 12,600 employees badged for entry to secure areas. The airport checks them at all pedestrian and vehicular entry points. The contract with an outside vendor costs about $3.5 million a year, a small part of the $406 million that Greater Orlando Aviation Authority spent in 2013. "Not all of the airports in the country have the latitude or the traffic" to do this, Mr. Brown said. Airlines for America, the leading trade group, says using a "risk-based system" recognizes that the same security measures need not apply to every individual or item. "Random screening happens today," the group said in a statement. "By its nature, 100% screening is a one-size-fits- all approach, which we do not think is appropriate." (RETURN TO TOP)