Now imagine the airport turned inside out, the depths of Sea-Tac raised to the surface, and you start to get an idea of what you could encounter during the busy holiday-travel season. It won’t just be the usual huge crowds that make air travel miserable. The task of getting tens of millions of people through the system will be made that much more difficult because of new deadlines imposed by Congress. After September 11, lawmakers created the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and ordered it to hire federal screeners for all 429 U.S. airports by Nov. 19, just in time for Thanksgiving, and to scan all checked luggage for explosives by the end of the year. The TSA insists it’s almost ready, and has already hired more than 44,000 screeners (following story). But the nation’s airports clearly aren’t; crowded bag wells often need extensive renovations to accommodate the equipment. In the short term the TSA will likely resort to plunking the bulky apparatus in lobbies at some big airports over the New Year holiday, clogging the small spaces and spawning theme-park-length lines. The result? Lobbies this winter could look like “the fall of Saigon,” says Michael Boyd, a Colorado-based aviation consultant.
Part of the problem is that the screening technology isn’t quite ready for takeoff. Bulky, minivan-size explosive-detection machines (CTX), which work like CAT scanners, are said to have an error rate of as much as 30 percent. That means some bags will have to be opened and subject-ed to another round of “trace detection” machines–smaller devices that swab for hints of explosives. After checking in, passengers at some airports may have to double back through the lobby with their bags, navigating an obstacle course of screening equipment. Others will surrender bags to out-of-sight screeners who will need to break locks and open luggage–a prospect that raises all kinds of liability issues. “It’s going to be like ‘I Love Lucy,’ with all these bags piling up,” says one senior airline executive. And long lines snaking out the terminal door present a security threat in themselves. Why would terrorists bother smuggling a bomb onto a plane when they could attack a clogged airport lobby, where there’s almost no security at all?
But the doomsday scenario could still be avoided through some political brinksmanship. After the Republican victories last week in Congress, it became more likely that lawmakers will pass some sort of “flexibility legislation” that could give the TSA as much as another year to finish the job in some airports. The exceptions are embedded in some versions of a homeland-security bill, which President Bush says is a top priority. The issue could be taken up as early as this week, when Congress will convene for a lame-duck session in which Republicans could seize power straight away. Failing that, the issue may not be resolved until next year, after a chaotic New Year rush.
For airports and the TSA, Congress’s mandate became like a nightmare home-improvement project–and what home-improvement project gets done on time? Part of the problem is that airports are like snowflakes: no two are exactly alike. Floors needed to be reinforced to accommodate the massive CTX machines, and power sources and cooling ducts had to be reconfigured. The TSA hired consultants from aircraft manufacturer Boeing to help figure out the logistics for each airport. Teams of engineers modeled the complex passenger flows at different ticket counters; business travelers tend not to check many bags, for example, but international travelers do.
Some city airports will avoid the mayhem. Salt Lake City International, for instance, has been screening all checked bags on its own since the Olympics last winter. It uses both the bulky CTX machines and smaller trace detectors in the lobby. The airport’s executive director, Tim Campbell, says the airport screened bags for 34,000 passengers each day during the Olympic rush (thousands more than on a typical winter holiday), and the process took less than a minute per bag. At Boston’s Logan airport, officials spent $146 million to construct an efficient “in-line” screening system below the terminal’s surface. The airport’s director, Thomas Kinton, says they’re still on track to get it done by the New Year.
Other transitions won’t be so smooth. At Sea-Tac, officials are getting creative, considering building hanging platforms that would support a 17,000-pound CTX machine and the personnel to run it. But that’s an immense construction project and probably couldn’t be completed in time for the deadline. In the short term, the TSA may have to stuff some equipment into Sea-Tac’s crowded lobby, which airport officials acknowledge is not an ideal solution.
Few blame the TSA for the baggage-screening mess, though airline execs have been known to dub the agency “Thousands Standing Around.” But most agree that no bureaucracy could manage such a mammoth task in so short a time, and say the agency’s attitude has improved dramatically under its new chief, Adm. James Loy. Instead, executives blame Congress, which rushed to improve security after September 11. The current plan “isn’t based on facts and data,” says Continental Airlines CEO Gordon Bethune. “This is going to cause immense heartburn.” Executives want more time to fine-tune the system, develop new technology and install permanent solutions that won’t be so disruptive.
But how do you tell that to someone like Bob Monetti, whose son was killed in 1988 when an onboard bomb blew up Pan Am Flight 103? “How many people need to get killed before we take security seriously?” he asks. Countless Americans affected by the tragedies of September 11 surely feel the same urgency. The problem is that, in practice, few travelers will tolerate the long waits. Security delays could send business travelers away in droves, as they did after the September attacks, further hammering an already struggling sector of our nation’s economy. With all the new security, we may gain some peace of mind over the holidays. But after a season of grinding hassles, we also just might lose our minds altogether.
title: “Are We There Yet " ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-15” author: “Joey Libby”
Take a moment to review. With a few days to go before they would have to choose the person to lead them out of the tax crunch and the energy crunch and the jobs crunch and the housing crunch and the education crunch, here is what Californians heard from the “front runners.” Gov. Gray Davis expressed deep disappointment that Arnold Schwarzenegger had been accused of groping countless women over the years and had, in his younger days, allegedly expressed his admiration for Adolf Hitler–and even mimicked a Nazi salute.
The groping charges broke in the Los Angeles Times, on the morning Schwarzenegger launched a charge on Sacramento aboard a bus emblazoned with a Mount Rushmore-size mural of his face. At first, aides tried to denounce the allegations. Within hours, though, the actor issued an apology–call it a “mea sorta culpa.” He admitted that he had on occasion “behaved badly,” while claiming, with great moral indignation, that “a lot” of the stories weren’t true.
The second strike came in a New York Times story recounting an interview Arnold gave for the 1977 documentary “Pumping Iron.” Asked to name his heroes, he allegedly responded, “I admired Hitler, for instance, because he came from being a little man with almost no formal education, up to power. And I admire him for being such a good public speaker.” (He went on to say that he “didn’t admire” the ends to which Hitler used his might, though that wasn’t reported initially). The alleged comments were distributed in a 1997 book proposal by director George Butler. Later, with his wife, Maria Shriver, at his side, Schwarzenegger said he “cannot imagine” making such comments “because I have always despised everything Hitler stands for.”
Arnold claimed he was the victim of a smear, and accused his enemies of running “a puke campaign” against him. Davis, renowned for his willingness to play down and dirty to pull out a win, angrily denied any involvement in the stories. He called the charges against Schwarzenegger a “shock to the public conscience.” But in post-recall California, there isn’t much that seems shocking anymore.
