Mandate for safer skies hits rocky patch on the ground

The burgeoning agency responsible for security has trampled on a few toes at the nation's airports.

By JEAN HELLER, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published August 12, 2002

Bill Jennings wanted to know why federal officials were in a garage at his airport without his permission. When he went to check, a guard blocked his way.

This facility is under the federal jurisdiction, the guard told Jennings. You must leave.

That didn't sit well with Jennings, the executive director of Orlando International Airport.

Jennings and two other airport officials refused to leave. The guard then summoned Orlando police, and the airport officials were threatened with arrest.

The incident at Orlando International in June is an extreme example of the friction between airport directors and federal law enforcement officials as deadlines approach for meeting tough new security measures. The antiterrorism effort includes the appointment of a federal security director at each airport, which layers a federal law enforcement bureaucracy over the civilian airport authority.

Coast Guard Adm. James M. Loy, the new director of the agency created last fall to protect the nation's aviation system from terrorism, acknowledged in an interview last week with the St. Petersburg Times that the marriage has been rocky.

"There has been an atmosphere of isolation and insulation created by the law enforcement tone," said Loy, who took over the federal Transportation Security Administration last month and has pledged changes.

After the Orlando International incident, TSA officials said they would try to do a better job of notifying airport officials of plans to use their facilities.

"Anything that took place is over," TSA spokeswoman Chris Rhatigan said. "It's done with. We've made our apologies. Lesson learned."

That isn't enough for Jennings' colleagues.

"TSA's response was that the next time they'll let us know, and our response is, no, the next time you'll ask permission," said John Plavin, president of Airports Council International, an association that represents the nation's 429 commercial airports. "TSA just doesn't get it. Airports have not suddenly become federal property."

The natural friction is intensified by the approaching security deadlines. Airport officials say the deadlines are unrealistic and cannot be met without hassles for passengers, wasting hundreds of millions of dollars and further economic punishment for airlines.

Congress has set a Dec. 31 deadline for every commercial airport to implement a system to screen every piece of checked-in luggage for explosives. The deadline might be delayed, but there's no guarantee.

The responsibility to meet the requirement rests with the TSA. But the agency's attitude during its first eight months rubbed airport operators all wrong.

"TSA doesn't come to the airports and say, 'This is what we need to do, how do we get it done?' " Plavin said. "They say, 'Get out of my way, sonny.' If they want to work with us, we're fine with that. If they try to strike out on their own, it will be war."

It isn't just the airports chafing under TSA's thumb. The friction created by an agency with little inclination to explain itself did not sit well with Congress, either.

That was a key factor in the abrupt departure last month of John Magaw, the original head of the TSA. Magaw had previously headed the Secret Service and the Treasury Department's Division of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

Most of the security directors sworn in under Magaw had no experience at airports. Virtually all are former high-ranking military officers, police officials or veterans of the FBI, ATF, the Secret Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration and Federal Aviation Administration security.

"FAA security, with its simple-minded, arbitrary, one-size-fits-all approach, didn't work and couldn't be made to work," said Richard Vacar, director of aviation for the Houston Airport System. "If I was worried about it with the FAA, TSA makes them look like pikers."

Loy, who is Magaw's successor, hopes to change that perception. He has a better relationship with Congress and says he wants to ease the tensions with airport directors. He is conducting frequent telephone conference calls with them and visiting airports.

"We want to provide world-class security with world-class customer service," Loy said. "I believe that if you are building policy or regulatory activity, the people most impacted by this . . . have to be at the table, or you stand a very good chance of not getting the optimal solution at the other end."

Several airport directors, including Ben DeCosta at Atlanta Hartsfield International Airport, say they are concerned about TSA's central authority.

"The frustration that I share with other airport directors arises out of the fact that issues are being managed and decisions made centrally, in Washington, rather than by the security directors at each individual airport," DeCosta said. "This delays decisions."

Loy agrees, at least in part.

"We can bring a national standard template to what we need to do," he said, "but it has to be adapted to the needs and configuration of each individual airport."

This is the message Loy delivered to 15 airport directors who met with him several weeks ago. Most came away encouraged, yet still skeptical.

"There's a long, established chain of command that has to be cleared before his message gets down into the trenches," said Gina Marie Lindsey, director of aviation at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

Airport directors don't oppose the tough security measures Congress wants. But they want more time to incorporate the minivan-sized screening machines into their baggage-handling systems instead of setting them up in the crowded spaces around ticket counters.

The House of Representatives has narrowly voted to extend the deadline by a year. Whether the Senate will go along is uncertain.

In the meantime, airports around the country face logistical challenges.

At Seattle-Tacoma, or SeaTac, just 19 feet is between the ticket counters and escalators bringing people from the parking garage. The airport buildings are loaded with asbestos. Any alterations to make room for equipment carry complex and expensive regulatory consequences. But if there are no structural changes and explosive detection equipment is installed in ticketing areas, the ticket lines would stretch outside the terminal.

Dallas has similar problems.

"We have 28 feet of space between the ticket counters and the outside windows," said Jeff Fegan, chief executive officer of Dallas-Forth Worth International Airport. "You put 50 or 60 of those (explosive detectors) on the ticketing level, and people will be lining up outside to check their bags. It won't work on a normal day here. Forget the holidays. The system will work best if it's incorporated into baggage handling, but you can't do that in a few months' time."

The federal security director at Dallas says he hears Fegan's complaint but cannot respond to it.

"Jeff knows I'm doing my job," Jim Wooten said, "and that's to be prepared to meet the Dec. 31 deadline. I understand his situation, where he might want to do it a different way. I respect his point of view. But I'm not going to endorse that because I have my job to do."

Airport directors have three more concerns: the effect on an ailing airline industry, the money that could be wasted and the new security concerns that jury-rigged baggage systems would create by congregating large numbers of people in one area.

"We've told them we'll have four-hour check-in lines at Southwest (Airlines) if they go ahead with current plans," said Randy Walker, director of aviation at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. "And they look at us like, 'So?' Well, it won't happen for very long because the traffic will just go away."

At Tampa International Airport, executive director Louis Miller said the short-term fix will require 11 of the large explosive detection systems, at a cost of $1-million each. They would be supplemented by 100 smaller trace detection systems, which "sniff" explosives, at a cost of $40,000 each.

The long-term solution, putting the equipment into the baggage handling network, would require 16 explosive detectors and only 20 trace detectors.

"We will have about 80 of the trace detectors that we'd use for a year or so and then have no need for," Miller said.

It will take 350 people to run the short-term system, fewer than 120 to handle the long-term system. The payroll comparison is $10-million annually versus $3.5-million.

TSA will bear the costs, and presumably TSA will figure out what to do with the excess personnel and equipment as long-term solutions to baggage screening are set in place.

But there might be implications for airlines.

"If we make security such a gauntlet that people think it's easier to drive, we're doing a real disservice to the airline industry," Vacar said.

There also are implications for passengers, including long lines.

"If we have to meet the Dec. 31 deadline, it's going to take an hour and a half to check a bag in the morning," Miller said.

While Miller has complaints about policies coming out of Washington, he says he has a good relationship with TIA's federal security director, Dario Compain, who has been on duty about five weeks.

"Some of the FSDs came in with an attitude that they're in charge, that the airport is theirs now," Miller said. "TSA in Washington is still very bureaucratic, taking the attitude that things will be done their way. Dario came in with a spirit of cooperation. He lets me know when something's happening. We talk. We meet. I'm grateful to have him."

Compain, a 30-year Army veteran, said his TSA training included an acknowledgement of the natural tension between law enforcement and airport directors.

"But the FSDs are law-enforcement oriented, and some of them might have difficulty changing," he said. "It boils down to leadership and management style."

On the other hand, he said, he found a different attitude among TIA's top officials than some of his counterparts found with their airport directors.

"Tampa has taken a different approach," he said. "It's a more positive approach. It's not that the federal government is trying to tell us what to do, but that the federal government is here to assist in something that has to be done. That creates an easier work environment."

Once the decision is made to keep or extend the Dec. 31 deadline, a decision Compain calls "congressionally mandated suspense," the tensions should ease.

"These are growing pains," he said. "These, too, shall pass."

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