Note: This page contains a SPECIAL EXPANDED VERSION of this article, posted on April 11, 2003. It includes content that was not able to be fit into the space available in the printed magazine. It also contains new information available since the article was first printed. The new material is marked with yellow highlighting, as this paragraph has been marked.

One year since the September 11th attacks, the civil aviation industry is still struggling to satisfy unprecedented legislative requirements for security (unprecedented costs), keep passengers happy despite inconveniences of the increased measures, all the while faced with below-normal levels of air travel (low revenue).

In the months before writing this article I engaged in discussions with airport managers, security personnel and law enforcement officers about their own airports, and about their own impressions of airport security in general since September 11th.

I wanted to compare those discussions with the content of the general media reports and commentary about airport security, and in most cases I found myself dealing with an "apples and oranges" situation - there wasn't a way to make a comparison or to reconcile the two. Throwing legislative actions and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) into the mix only made things more irreconcilable.

Getting an Accurate Picture
This situation reminded me of a college textbook exercise where the task was to examine two paintings and describe what they had in common. One was a picture of a nicely gardened house complete with smoke coming out of the chimney and puffy white clouds overhead. The other was a meadow scene with a clear blue sky and a fence that ran off into the distance. It was hard to determine what the two scenes had in common.

Turning the page revealed the point of the exercise: a larger painting that included the house and the meadow as well as a barn, silo and other elements of the large farm to which they all belonged. Too narrow a view can give you plenty of information, but not enough information to understand the "big picture". The big picture includes all the details, but those details are best understood and dealt with in the context of the big picture. Managing the house, the meadow, the barn or any other elements of the farm has to be done in the full context of the farm and its overall plan.

This is the problem with the airport security picture. Each individual piece is managed by a different party (airport, passenger airlines, air cargo, airport retail businesses, parking and so on), each having its own responsibilities and commercial objectives. Various aspects of security fall under the jurisdiction of airport or local city or county or state law enforcement, INS, DEA, U.S. Customs, ATF, and so on. (See ST&D October 2001 issue for a complete examination of the security agency "alphabet soup".)

So it's no wonder that individual parts of the airport security picture, viewed independently, are hard to reconcile. Here are a few of them:

1. Nearly all airports have generally improved many aspects of their security.
2. As demonstrated in recent tests of checkpoints, the newly formed TSA has not yet managed to improve checkpoint-screening performance.
3. Most of the general public equates airport security with checkpoint screening, which they think is very below where it should be. The general public is largely unaware of the many security improvements at airports.
4. The traveling public is for the most part dissatisfied with the delays and inconveniences resulting from treating all passengers as potential terrorists.
5. The general prediction is that the TSA won't be able to meet the federally mandated machine-based luggage screening deadlines that are less than six months away, and will implement alternate techniques that take longer and will add significant delays.
6. A few airlines are earning profits; most are not.

It doesn't help any when anecdotal references - usually inaccurate or false - promote fear and uncertainty. A familiar quotation is the IRA message issued after a failed assassination attempt on British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, "We only have to be lucky once, you have to be lucky every time." That's a scary statement, but an inaccurate one. We don't have to be lucky every time, we only have to be adequately prepared and alertly on watch every time. There is a significant difference.

FAA Analysis and Predictions
The FAA, in its 27th annual Commercial Aviation Forecast in March of this year, said that airline passenger traffic would continue to decline in 2002, followed by a strong recovery in 2003. This prediction was made just before the TSA opened its doors two weeks earlier, before the FAA could know that six months would go by without significant progress by the TSA in addressing the most visible of airport security issues.

The forecast also sees airline passenger traffic returning to more normal levels of growth by fiscal year 2004, expanding at an average annual rate of 4 percent for the next 10 years, reaching 1 billion passengers in fiscal 2013. That is three years later than predicted in last year's forecast, and the slippage is due largely to the recession and the Sept. 11 attacks.

The FAA sees several uncertainties facing the airline industry in the next two years. These include:

• Exactly how soon and to what extent will passenger traffic recover from the Sept. 11 attacks?
• With carriers facing large losses this year while coping with reduced passenger demand and increased security and insurance costs, when will airline finances recover?
• How soon and to what extent will the high-fare business traffic - which provides a large percentage of airline revenue - return from depressed 2001 levels?

At the 27th Annual Commercial Aviation Forecast Conference , Administrator Jane Garvey also said , "In his January column in Air Transport World, Jay Donoghue reminds us that, 'Aviation does not attract the easily discouraged.' He says optimism has been part of the business since the beginning when aviation's pioneers 'convinced themselves they could make money flying people and stuff around.'

Garvey continued, "Jay is right to be optimistic about the future. I think we all share that optimism."

Among the points listed by John Rodgers, the FAA Director of Aviation Policy & Plans, as the Fiscal Year 2002 Industry Assumptions were these two:

• Security/Confidence - No more attacks on the U.S.; confidence returns
• Short haul demand falls as consumers find alternate means

Both of these assumptions indicate very important issues that warrant close examination.

Not Just Security Confidence
Security confidence is a major factor in passenger travel. Confidence has not been improving, and may very well decline further.

Short haul demand has fallen because passengers generally don't want to fly if they don't have to. This is due not only to the security safety concerns as identified by the FAA, but also due to significant inconvenience, a factor not identified in the FAA analysis.

"The only way the airlines will get passengers back is by reducing security-related inconveniences", said Richard Doubrava, managing director-security for the Air Transport Association.

This creates a problem for airlines, because airlines have no control over the security regulations and procedures that are the source of the inconvenience. It's actually up to others to solve this problem, which right now primarily means the Transportation Security Agency and those who provide technology for security screening.

TSA Difficulties
The TSA itself is struggling to staff up and meet what now seem to be unrealistic deadlines given the current state of its resources.

Initial difficulties in hiring and training the passenger screener work force will make it challenging for TSA to meet the deadline for federalizing this work force,'' said Gerald Dillingham, the Government Account Office's director of civil aviation issues (as reported on July 29, 2002 in the Minnesota Star Tribune ).

For example, the agency needs 2,300 screeners to staff the three New York-area airports - La Guardia, Kennedy and Newark - but only 368 people accepted job offers as of mid-July, said Alexis Stefani, the Transportation Department's assistant inspector general.

In May of this year Jeff Fegan, CEO of Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, recently commented on the likely impact of keeping the December 31 deadline in place for checked baggage screening. "The bottom line is that the Transportation Security Administration will not have the money, manpower or machines to get the job done by December 31," he said. "And the result will be travelers waiting up to three hours outside of our terminals and literally in the streets to simply check their bags."

This is exactly the opposite of what the airlines need to recover. But Fegan points out that inconvenience is not the only issue. "Our greatest fear," he said, "in this very likely scenario is that these crowds could serve as an easy target for another terrorist attack." This brings up an issue well known to security practitioners, that security measures themselves must not create additional risks or vulnerabilities. Yet that is what is likely to happen.

TSA Regulation/Compliance Mode
One of the other difficulties is that previous FAA operations have put airports and airlines in regulation/compliance mode. That sometimes means that airports and airlines don't take as much initiative as they should. One example of this is the issue of ID verification. Although the airlines and airport checkpoints require that a passenger present a government issued photo ID, there is no attempt made to verify the ID is a valid one. That's quite an omission considering that the September 11th terrorists used fake driver's licenses to board their planes.

In California in March of 2002, Sergeant Chris Bonzer of the Huntington Park Police Department explained to CBS News, "It wouldn't be hard for a terrorist to obtain a false driver's license and board a plane." Joel Grover of CBS news set out to test that theory. For $150 Joel's news director purchased a fake California driver's license from a photo shop in downtown Los Angeles, and used it to fly in and out of 5 airports without the ID ever coming under suspicion.

In 2002 the government has cracked down on employees using fake IDs, launching a nationwide effort that resulted in almost 200 arrests. Debra Tang, US Attorney said, "The employees that we looked at all had high level badges, called SIDA badges, that gave them access to the most secure areas of the airports."

In an Eye on America follow-up story reporting the government crackdown on airport employees, CBS News correspondent Sandra Hughes asked, "What about passengers? What is to prevent a terrorist from buying fake identification, eluding authorities, and boarding a plane?"

Sgt. Bonzer responded, "It's not a question of if it's going to happen. It's a question of when it's going to happen." Bonzer continued, ""We still have people traveling through the airports, displaying identification that for all intents and purposes could be counterfeit. Individuals in charge of travel, in charge of airports, are just not grasping the seriousness of this."

Until they do, terrorists will still have access to America's skies.

Click here for a page where you can view or download a Quicktime Video Clip of the CBS News Eye On America Follow-Up story.

California Senator Barbara Boxer has initiated Senate bill 1980 to require training for all airline personnel responsible for checking passenger identification, and to require the use of some kind of identification scanning technology to verify passenger identification. One unfortunate effect of the bill would be to further the regulation/compliance mode as opposed to fostering initiative. It would benefit the aviation industry to do all it can to eliminate any apparent need for further federal regulations, by taking initiative wherever it can, especially for relatively low-cost security initiatives like ID verification.

Evidently this bill inspired Senator Boxer's amendment to The Cargo Security Act, S.165 , requiring guidelines for verifying passenger identification, which passed on March 13, 2003.

This is the TSA and FAA's chance to get maximum bang for their buck by approving funding for what would probably be the lowest cost security initiative in the FAA's history.

One airport that has taken the initiative with regard to driver's license verification is Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). The ID badging office took it upon itself to purchase ID scanning units. The small scanners, about twice the size of a cigarette pack, can verify more than 40 state driver licenses as being authentic or fake. This is an important element of security for the badging office, because background checks won't turn up information on people who have fraudulent driver licenses. The background-check system isn't likely to have information under a false name. If there are no fingerprints on file for a person with the false ID, that person could easily end up passing the background check.

At about $1,200 to $2,000 each, one such device ought to be in use at every point in every airport where photo ID is checked. However, I could only find one airport that had the devices in use, LAX, and then only at the ID badging office.

In the six months following the original publication of this article, a few more airports have adopted the use of identification document authentication technology. For example, Imaging Automation, Inc. announced that Logan Airport in Boston will use its i-Authenticate technology, including technology licensed from Intelli-Check, Inc., at the airport's badging office. In March of 2003, Imaging Automation announced that 8 UK airports would also deploy their technology.

A powerful and very affordable scanner (less than $1,200) is available through IDi Technologies (short for Identification Integration Technologies). The scanner can verify both driver licenses and credit cards. At a recent trade show, this scanner was the only one to accurately detect 100% of the fake driver licenses prepared to test this type of device.

Why hasn't the TSA, who has been informed of the ID verification technology, taken steps to put it into use? A likely reason is that there is no legislative deadline to meet for ID verification, and the TSA is having a tough enough time executing the initiatives that do have legislative deadlines.

Alternate Means To Travel Are Not Just Available - They Are Being Sold Hard
The FAA Commercial Aviation Forecast analysis didn't include another important point. People are not just finding alternate means of travel. They are finding alternate means of doing business. The later move is a much more dangerous one for the aviation industry. When companies revise their ways of doing business to avoid business travel, it's hard to reverse that momentum.

When companies invest in the infrastructure that makes it possible to eliminate travel (such as video conferencing, Virtual Private Networks, and remote collaboration software), they will maximize their ROI on these investments by maximizing their use, and minimizing air travel long-term. Note that when you can turn travel time into working time, you get a net gain in productivity. If you can do that at or near the cost of traveling, it's a no-brainer to get corporate buy-in. Once such investments are made, it won't matter if air travel security is high and the flying experience is excellent. The economics of the situation will be against a return to past levels of air travel for such businesses.

A February 2002 report by Cahners Instat/MDR , a high-tech market research firm estimates that video conferencing sales will near the $1 billion mark in 2002 and surpass it in 2003. In a survey included in the report, 75% of respondents said "Yes" to the question - "Do you think your company should make more use of Video Conferencing in the future?" The report also states that North America represents, by far, the largest individual market for video conferencing equipment, and will experience explosive growth during the coming 2 years.

Don't for a minute think that the small legion of sales people intent to sell their travel-replacement technologies won't be leveraging off of whatever dissatisfaction exists with passenger security inconveniences.

The General Aviation Wildcard
If major airline business travel continues to involve lengthy delays and remains inconvenient, this could open the door to alternate means of air travel, such as the low-cost corporate jets envisioned by Vern Raburn, founder and CEO of Eclipse Aviation. As reported in the Wall Street Journal , Aviation International News , Wired magazine and other publications, "Imagine someday calling a taxicab in the shape of a tiny jet that seats six and can pick you up at your local municipal airport and deliver you to where you want to go for about the cost of an airline coach seat." Journalist J. Lynn Lunsford notes, "The prototype is sitting in a hangar at the Albuquerque airport."

Not only would such a service bypass the delays and inconvenience of major airline travel, it could take travelers miles (and hours) closer to their travel destination. Already, the company says it has more than 500 orders from customers who have put down nonrefundable deposits. This type of service holds the promise of increasing productive time and convenience for less total cost.

Underestimating the Harm to the Aviation Industry
The existence of alternatives to conventional air travel that are actively being sold means that the real harm caused to the aviation industry by security-related delays and inconveniences is probably much greater than is being estimated from within the industry.

The Risk of Misplaced Confidence
"Now that most of the media interested in evaluating airport security 6 months after 9/11 have been heard from, the consensus is that screening personnel make or break an airport's security program," said Charles Slepian, the CEO of the Foreseeable Risk Analysis Center (FRAC), in a guest column written recently for RightTurns.com. The screening procedures are definitely a key part of anti-terrorist security. But the consensus is incorrect if it includes the idea that successful screening is most of what it takes to make an airport secure. What is definitely true is that the speed and ease of screening can make or break the flying experience, and unless something is done to improve that experience the aviation industry, and our economy, will continue to suffer for it.

While there is much more to airport security than screening, the screening of travelers and their luggage is the part of the security picture that impacts air travelers the most. Other aspects of security, such as perimeter security, cargo handling, and so on do not directly impact the traveler's flying experience. This is good news in the sense that successfully addressing this one issue, albeit a tough one, would result in a big payoff.

However, this is where shortsightedness can lead right into another problem, one that is related to the nature of security. One of the objectives of security is to reduce the attractiveness of the target. That doesn't eliminate the threat; it simply means that doing a good job results in someone or something else becoming the target. Thus doing an effective job of passenger and luggage screening reduces the attractiveness of those means of attack, and shifts the focus to other vulnerabilities of the airport, such as congested ticket lobbies and waiting areas. Doing a good job of airport security across the boards moves the threat away to some other venue.

Public Perception
The general public perception seems to be that once screening is effective, airports will be secure. This idea is dangerous. If terrorists change their approach in response to effective screening, and pull off a different kind of attack on an airport, public confidence in aviation security could easily be shocked into a new and disastrous low. Having spent billions of tax dollars on security measures, and having been patient for more than a year, the general public could come to conclude that air travel as we have known it was simply a big mistake, a too-idealistic American dream, or any other conclusion that further lowers the number of customers that take to the air. Media hype could spread such conclusions like a plague that could kill and cripple many aviation-based businesses.

Thus these two major risks to the aviation industry require immediate attention:

• Business travelers could be driven off and/or lured away to alternate modes of doing business.
• False perceptions about airport security could leave the general American public more vulnerable to manipulation by terrorist actions.

Luring Travelers Back
The FAA forecast could be interpreted to imply all we have to do is wait a while, and travelers will simply begin to return in higher numbers. Fortunately, that's not the only option. Although the airlines don't have control over the security requirements and can't correct the security-related delays and inconvenient procedures, they can offset them by offering rewards to travelers in the form of benefits and services.

Why not make the flying experience so great, that security inconveniences simply can't overshadow it? That would be more in the tradition of American initiative. Being a business traveler myself, I can offer a few suggestions based upon my own experience.

First of all, arriving early to face long lines at curbside or at the ticket counters to check luggage is not really a security-related problem. It's a staffing situation; especially when see curbside or ticket counter positions are unmanned. Whatever the actual reasons are for those conditions, to me as a customer it says, "We, the airline, don't care about you."

Here are some benefit and incentive ideas presented in small-to-big order:

• Give an incentive to arrive at the airport two hours ahead of departure. Like a free coffee at Starbucks or Cinnabon, at least. And make sure that Starbucks is sufficiently staffed up, so that long lines at the coffee counter won't counteract short luggage check-in lines.
• If security screening gets even worse than it is now, provide some bonus frequent flyer points for early arrival. In my own case, since I use them for family vacation travel, that would win the support of my whole family.
  
• Hold a random drawing to award a free first-class upgrade to one or two of the first 20 arrivals at the gate. That should apply to anyone, not just frequent fliers.
• Make cell phones work from anywhere in the airport. This would turn waiting time into productive time. Some airports are better than others in this regard. My own cell phone works very well from almost anywhere in Houston's Bush Intercontinental Airport, but not very well inside most other airports.

Some good brainstorming should be able to come up with many more feasible ideas.

Investing In Travelers
If business travelers invest in non-travel ways of doing business, it will be very costly to get many of them back, and impossible to get all of them back. It would be much more cost-effective to invest in upgrading the travel experience so that business travel would have advantages it doesn't have now. The improvements shouldn't be limited just to business benefits; the flying experience should be improved for everyone.

• Provide electrical outlets for notebook computer users. Most notebook batteries are only good for about 2 hours.There should be plenty of outlets at the gate areas so computer users can work and still board the plane with fully charged batteries.
• Provide high-speed Internet connections in the gate areas, and wherever else it would be convenient for notebook computer users. Anything that facilitates work or communication would be beneficial.
• On flights over 90 minutes, provide affordable DVD player rental and give them free to frequent flyers. Keep a stock of the latest DVD releases on the plane. This solves the problem that once a frequent flyer has seen the current movie, the movie benefit disappears for a month. Future technology will provide movies on demand at each seat. In the mean time, this would be a workable alternative.
  
• Provide high-speed Internet connections on planes. This is a much bigger technical challenge, but it should have a large payoff. It could really increase productivity for many business travelers. It would also enable participation in office videoconferences during a flight. That would be one reason to take a higher-cost flight, to schedule it coincidental with a planned business conference. It would also be possible for travelers to use voice over I/P technology (VOIP) to make telephone calls over the Internet connection. Since cell phone use is prohibited in the air, this should be a welcome option.
• At the gate areas, show 2 or 3 movies on big screens and give wireless headsets to those waiting. If passengers have to start arriving 3 hours before departure, this would make the waiting time more enjoyable. Portable DVD players could also be used at the gate areas.
• Restaurants and snack shops could get in on the action by offering discounts, free desert or other rewards to passengers whose ticket shows a departure time two hours or more away. Roving sandwich and snack carts would also be another way to counter the long-line phenomenon.

For the most part these are easy things to accomplish. Much more could be done, and I suspect that existing long-term plans by the airlines would be fruitful source of ideas. Now is the time to choose a few and implement them.

Don't forget that satisfied customers generate lots of word of mouth advertising. This would provide the industry with the needed benefit of improving general public confidence in the industry.

Addressing Public Perceptions of Security
Talking about security can be a two-edged sword. Revealing some security techniques to the wrong persons can aid them in defeating or avoiding the security measures. This is one reason why nearly all airlines won't talk much if at all about security. However, many security measures can and should be promoted to increase public confidence as well as to deter crime. For example, Mayor Jim Hahn of Los Angeles recently held two press conferences at LAX to publicly announce airport security initiatives.

On July 26, 2002, Mayor Hahn announced a $15 million Perimeter Security Improvements initiative that will consist of approximately eight miles of upgraded fencing surrounding the airport. The new fencing along large portions of the airport perimeter will include a 2-1/2-foot tall concrete rail with eight feet of heavy-duty chain-link fence and six strands of barbed wire, intrusion detection devices, increased lighting, and CCTV monitoring. Security personnel will be able to view the entire perimeter area through the CCTV monitors. Intrusion alarms will automatically zero-in the cameras on the locations of any intrusions.

On August 1, 2002, Mayor Hahn announced a $15 to $20 million CCTV initiative to put 1,200 cameras in the LAX terminal areas, along with digital video recorders. Images of all public areas of the terminals will be available via wired and wireless network connections to fixed and mobile security staff.

Addressing Public Perceptions of Security
The more the general public can be informed about security initiatives, the stronger the base of public confidence will be. That will also correct the false impression that passenger and luggage screening is all there is to airport security. It costs next to nothing to promote or announce security projects, yet not doing so deprives the industry and general public of one of the major benefits that should result from multi-million dollar initiatives - public confidence in airport security.