Feds offer little help on airport mandate

Jace Radke

Monday, Nov. 11, 2002 | 11:02 a.m.

Holiday travel tips

"There is still no plan, and it's a concern for us and many other major airports," Rosemary Vassiliadis, Clark County deputy aviation director, said. "I don't think they are going to try to shove a plan down our throats at the last minute, but if the Transportation Security Administration makes a ruling we'll have to adhere to it."

Since its creation by Congress a year ago the TSA has mandated that the nation's 429 passenger airports have the ability to screen all bags for explosives beginning Jan. 1. The TSA wants that screening done through the use of millions of dollars worth of bomb-detecting equipment.

The TSA continues to stand firm behind the deadline, despite pressure from airport managers across the country, who say that the deadline is unrealistic because of a lack of explosive-detection machines and the time needed to work the machines into airport designs to avoid forcing customers to wait for hours for their bags to be screened.

"We fully intend to meet the deadline," TSA spokesman Dave Steigman said. "If it can't be with explosive-detection machines, it will be with a combination of trace detection, bomb-detecting dogs and hand searches."

McCarran has six minivan-size explosive-detection machines, commonly called EDS, and about 50 table-size explosive trace detection machines, or ETD. But for all baggage to be screened by machines without adding a four-hour wait for passengers, the airport needs about 60 EDS units and 140 ETD machines, airport spokeswoman Hilarie Grey said.

The larger machines cost about $1 million each, while the smaller machines, which analyze swabs that are rubbed on luggage to pick up explosive residue, cost about $40,000 apiece.

Without enough machines to go around and the added wait time hand searches require, airport managers say the deadline is unrealistic.

"There are a lot of questions," Vassiliadis said. "For example, even if the TSA could get us 20 more EDS machines, we don't have sufficient power in ticketing to run them.

"We'd need to add (electrical) lines and pull them to ticketing, where we have a marble floor. That would be a big project."

Other questions that airports want answered include how many EDS machines they can count on having before the deadline; how screeners would open locked bags; and who would be responsible for claims of stolen items.

Mike Boyd, owner of the Boyd Group, an airline consulting firm located in Colorado, said the reason there are so many unanswered questions is the deadline is more political than security orientated.

"The deadline is there for politicians to look good," Boyd said. "It needs to be delayed, but more than that it needs to be rethought. The TSA has no plan, because at the top the TSA has no management."

Airport managers are still hoping the Senate will pass a bill already approved by the House to extend the deadline by a year.

Failing that and a federal screening plan, Vassiliadis said, the airport likely would rely on a combination of bomb-sniffing dogs, EDS and ETD machines and bag-matching, which would not increase wait times greatly.

Bag matching requires that a passenger's luggage does not get loaded onto the plane unless the passenger is also aboard. This method would not prevent suicide bombings.

"Wait time is going to increase no matter what we do, but if we use the combination it shouldn't be drastic," Vassiliadis said. "We'd hope that we wouldn't have to quickly implement a plan in the middle of the busy holiday travel season."

Clark County Aviation Director Randy Walker has said he would like to see the deadline delayed to allow time for airports to craft individual screening plans.

McCarran has already submitted one screening plan to the TSA that was rejected, and Boeing, which is working with the TSA as a consultant, has also had a screening plan for McCarran rejected by the TSA.

McCarran is second only to Los Angeles International Airport as the busiest airport in the world in terms of numbers of passengers originating or finishing a trip. On an average day about 60,000 people travel through McCarran, but during peak times that number can increase to 100,000 to 110,000 travelers.

"We're not like a lot of other airports, because our peaks are extreme," Vassiliadis said. "We saw what can happen right after Sept. 11, when we reopened the airport and we had lines out the door closing down our streets."

McCarran already had five EDS machines in ticketing, and additional machines would further limit space, possibly pushing lines outside the building on peak travel days, she said.

The optimum situation at McCarran would be to build the EDS machines into the baggage tracks behind the ticket counters, Walker said. Such a project would cost at least $150 million, and the soonest it could be completed would be two years from the start of construction.

Two weeks ago Vassiliadis attended an airport security conference and found that most of the country's other major airports also do not have a TSA-approved plan for screening.

At San Francisco International Airport, officials say they have their own plan, much like McCarran. He didn't say whether the TSA had approved the plan.

"We've got a plan in place, but in this short time frame we've been given, it's not possible to have anything that's optimal," San Francisco International spokesman Gerry Alley said.

Alley added that the transition to complete baggage screening on Jan. 1 could cause delays.

Nevertheless federal officials say they will soon have approved plans at all the nation's airports.

"We are working toward having a plan for each airport, and we anticipate to have them in place (by the deadline)," Steigman said.

Boyd said he sees a bleak future for the airline industry if the TSA continues to move forward with what he says are nebulous plans that don't address the concerns of the nation's airports.

"You are going to start to see problems in December when they start to phase this in," Boyd said. "There will be delays, but more than that, there will be less planes and people flying into Las Vegas and other airports.

"If you're coming to Las Vegas to golf but it takes five hours to check your golf bag at LaGuardia, you're not coming."

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