Columnist Jeff German: Confidence in air travel needs fixing

Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2003 | 10:58 a.m.

You won't find me defending Nathaniel Heatwole, the 20-year-old college student who created a national scare within the airline industry.

But Heatwole, though he deserves to be punished, managed to point out that we still have gaps in airline security more than two years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

That should be disturbing news to Las Vegas tourism officials who rely on the airline industry to bring visitors here by the millions each year.

Clark County Aviation Director Randy Walker, who runs McCarran International Airport, says hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent the past couple of years bolstering security at the airport, and yet Friday's incident demonstrated the system may never be totally secure.

"Anybody who thinks you're going to put in a system that's 100 percent full-proof is naive," Walker says. "You're always going to have human error, and as long as human error is involved, there are going to be mistakes."

But Walker also understands that authorities now have to reassure Americans that the airways are safe.

Heatwole was charged in federal court in Maryland on Monday with taking a dangerous weapon aboard an aircraft. He could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

The case followed the discovery Friday of bags containing box cutters and other banned items aboard two Southwest Airlines planes, one in Houston and the other in New Orleans. The discovery resulted in a search of all jetliners across the country and a lot of jittery passengers.

It turns out that the national scare could have been prevented had the Transportation Security Administration taken seriously an e-mail it received from Heatwole on Sept. 15. In it, Heatwole had bragged that he had placed the items on the planes to show how easily security could be breached. Heatwole not only provided details in the e-mail of where the bags were smuggled onto the airliners, but he gave TSA officials his name and telephone number.

TSA officials now have a lot of explaining to do to the public and to members of Congress who can't believe the agency could screw up so badly.

Friday's incident also demonstrated that there are gaps in communication among the agencies assigned to protect us from terrorists.

Before the TSA figured out that the discovery of the box cutters was part of an act of civil disobedience, it was considered a national emergency. And yet Jerry Bussell, homeland security adviser to Gov. Kenny Guinn, had to learn about it from watching the news on the Fox Network.

Bussell publicly complained about being left out of the loop, and he has since been kept abreast of the developments by TSA and federal homeland security officials.

But in the future, if a real terrorist threat ever surfaces, it would be nice if federal authorities alerted Nevada's first-responders ahead of time.

In the meantime, the TSA needs to fix its internal communication system and find a way to encourage others who have concerns about airline security to step forward in a more responsible way than Nathaniel Heatwole.

It also needs to make us feel secure about flying -- again.