Editorial: Flight security takes nosedive

Friday, Dec. 2, 2005 | 7:43 a.m.

As of Dec. 20 airplane passengers will be able to take some items in their carry-on luggage that have been banned since 9/11, including small scissors, nail files, corkscrews, matches and screwdrivers up to seven inches. Still banned will be firearms, of course, and lighters, ice picks, box cutters, pocketknives and other items that have obvious potential as weapons.

The Transportation Security Administration, the federal agency charged with keeping flights safe, says the changes will enable passenger screeners to spend more time guarding against bigger threats, such as explosives. The agency says that one in every four carry-on bags contain scissors, and that confiscating them is not the best use of a screener's time.

Bigger threats exist, and under the new policy, screeners will have more time to look for them, TSA officials say.

Opposing the changes is the 46,000-member Association of Flight Attendants. This group objects to the TSA's reasoning that small, sharp objects are no longer a major threat because pilots are secure behind fortified cockpit doors. The flight attendants ask: What about us and our passengers?

The TSA counters that security strategy needs to evolve, and the only way that can happen is to more efficiently manage the screeners' time. Some of its new strategy, which emphasizes more thoroughness and greater randomness in the searching of bags and passengers, will be announced today.

The TSA says its new strategy will frustrate terrorists, whose pattern has been to study daily security routines for months before striking.

We agree with the flight attendants. Small and sharp items can be lethal in the hands of enraged passengers.

The federal government took over airport security partly because private firms were cutting back on staff to increase profits. The Washington Post reports, however, that the government has cut 12,000 screener positions over the past three years.

We believe many of those positions should be brought back, so that new strategies can be employed without diminishing the old ones.