Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: Lazy airlines put travel agencies - and you - in danger

Saturday, Sept. 26, 1998 | 3:13 a.m.

SHE IS A WOMAN with a mission and the airline industry shouldn't underestimate her determination. The woman is Henderson's Barbara Pisa, who left her Illinois travel agency because of the way she was treated by airlines in collecting for the tickets taken from her office by a burglar.

Pisa, along with law-enforcement people, other travel-agency owners who had lost their businesses and airline representatives, appeared before the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Aviation of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure on Feb. 26. The testimony given reveals that airlines have ruined several agencies with their insensitive demands; that the stealing of airline tickets is big business but given little attention by most law-enforcement agencies; that there are big losses in unpaid taxes; and that the criminal element dealing in stolen tickets is a threat to the safety of other passengers and possibly to our national security. Many of these serious problems could be prevented if the airlines would take a few extra seconds to check the tickets when passengers are arriving for a flight.

Nancy Linares of the Association of Retail Travel Agents identified problems for the subcommittee when pointing out, "The current airline rules governing ticket thefts place an unlimited liability upon travel agents. When the ticket stock is stolen from an agency, current U.S. laws do not place any limits on the liability represented by the stolen tickets." Linares went on to tell the lawmakers that "the airlines themselves make no effort to track these stolen tickets."

Most importantly, Linares made clear that "if the airlines possess the technology to track a passenger's frequent-flyer number, federal taxes and passenger-facility charges and other numerical data, they can also take a few extra seconds to scan the stock number on any ticket to match against a database of stolen ticket numbers. What's that extra time at the gate or counter weighed against a chance to catch thieves using stolen tickets or, worse yet, a terrorist or criminal using the ticket for illicit purposes?"

Pisa, in her presentation, told the subcommittee that all taxpayers are eventually ripped off by the present lack of concern over the stolen tickets. She said, "The criminal who flies on a stolen forged ticket does not pay the airlines for it, even though they sometimes get upgraded and sometimes get frequent-flyer miles. The victimized agencies' insurance carriers will not pay. They all say the stolen tickets are worthless until they are forged and then accepted.

"Who does pay, then? The answer is the taxpayers. That's who pays, you and me, all of us who pay taxes. You see, every single forged airline ticket that they accept is actually a sale to them, a full-fare back-door sale. They simply write off as a loss the inflated erroneous price the forgers have printed on the ticket. It's far more profitable than them selling a ticket themselves. A full fare with no employee time involved. A whole, illegal, black-market, underground sales force generating billions of dollars in revenue with no expense to themselves. That is why they don't want this to stop."

But what about the kind of people dealing in stolen tickets?

Detective Gary L. Yallelus of the Metro-Dade Police Department of Miami also testified that his city is one of several identified hot spots for the use of stolen tickets. Also on this list are Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Orange County and Las Vegas. The Miami detective said, "We have directly linked the use of stolen tickets to money-laundering, drug-smuggling, alien-smuggling, and I have one documented case where a terrorist has come into the United States and he has used stolen tickets for money-laundering purposes. Again I would request that airlines be mandated to check the tickets. I also would like to see a task force set up that can coordinate this thing across the country."

During his testimony, Yallelus referred to an indifference to the problem by the FBI. He used the Los Angeles office of the FBI as a specific example. Neil J. Gallagher, deputy assistant director of the FBI Criminal Division, told the subcommittee that his agency initiated a major investigation of stolen airline tickets in 1992. He views the matter as a "wide-ranging crime problem" but not the action of a "formal, organized criminal organization."

The police detective later discussed the links he found between one stolen-ticket operation and foreign criminal groups including terrorists. He also explained how stolen ticket blanks are used for money-laundering purposes.

Last week, Pisa showed me her copies of stolen tickets and zeroed in on how easily they could have been spotted by alert airline employees. It doesn't take a genius to spot some of the most obvious ticket problems, but in only five seconds the stolen ticket can be identified by a computer.

The use of half a ticket and cashing in the other half is certainly easy cash for criminals. Also, we must ask why so many of the tickets take people to countries such as drug-center Colombia or terrorist havens Iran and Pakistan.

Because of Israeli security provisions, Pisa told me she hasn't found any stolen tickets used on that country's El Al airline. If El Al can do it, why can't American, Northwest and other airlines take a few seconds to protect you and me as airline passengers and taxpayers?

Is this big business? Pisa has records showing that 150 travel agencies were robbed last year. She surveyed only 13 of them, which showed a loss of $1,264,643. I'd say, for your protection and mine, it's time for the airline industry to quit yawning and take action.

This awakening would be too late for George Hudson of Eastwood Park, Ill. Three generations of his family ran an excellent travel agency that was forced out of business because of demands made by airlines following the theft of blank tickets. Despite early warnings about the ticket stock and the numbers involved, the airlines' only action was to bill the Hudson firm $2 million. In his testimony, Hudson told of "348 mostly one-way tickets from Phoenix to various parts of the United States." He believes that many of these tickets were used by companies flying illegal aliens to promised jobs.

This story isn't going away because Barbara Pisa has collected enough facts and figures to keep these problems alive. Sooner or later, Congress and the airlines industry will be forced to act.

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