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A ban on carry-on luggage is still being considered. Some passengers say that's okay with them - to a point.
By JEAN HELLER
© St. Petersburg Times, published September 30, 2001
TAMPA -- The look of shock and disbelief that crossed Whitney Villmer's face suggested the 15-year-old from Treasure Island had just been told she was losing her telephone privileges for a year.
Villmer was sitting in the terminal at Tampa International Airport with her father, waiting to board a flight for St. Louis. Several pieces of carry-on baggage lay at her feet. She had just been asked how she would feel if she had to check all the bags and board the aircraft empty-handed.
"You mean fly without my laptop and my DVD movies?" she asked. "I wouldn't want to do that. It would be a really boring flight."
Yet that is a prospect airline passengers face if the Federal Aviation Administration decides it is in the interests of aviation safety to ban most, if not all, carry-ons. The possibility was raised by FAA Administrator Jane Garvey in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.
Such a plan was not part of a list of security measures President Bush put forth last week, but it is still on the table for future consideration.
Most passengers interviewed at TIA had reservations about a carry-on ban, though Barbara Rose of Sarasota, a frequent flier, wasn't one of them.
"I'm only carrying stuff aboard because I already checked my limit," Rose said. "Checking everything would be fine with me."
With a caveat, it would also be acceptable to Supatra Matos of Inglewood, Calif., who was in Tampa en route home from a cruise to Mexico.
"If the airlines would make sure the bags are there when I arrive, fine," Matos said. "But I don't want to have to wait around for my luggage. That's why people carry things aboard in the first place."
In fact, according to a recent St. Petersburg Times poll of Florida voters by Political/Media Research of Washington, D.C., a carry-on ban would be acceptable to 56 percent. Thirty-eight percent opposed it and 6 percent were unsure.
Kelly and Michelle King of Dunedin, at TIA recently at the start of a vacation, said they wouldn't mind checking their bags for leisure travel but questioned the practicality of asking business travelers to do that as the airlines lay off personnel.
"When I travel on business, I'm in a hurry, and I carry everything aboard," Michelle King said. "I'd be willing to check my bags, but only if there were huge improvements in check-in procedures. We're flying AirTran today, and there were only two ticket agents to take care of everyone. That's unacceptable."
If a carry-on ban were to take shape, it is anybody's guess what that shape would be.
Would parents of infant children have to travel without diapers, formula and teething toys?
Probably not, said FAA spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen.
Women's purses? An executive's briefcase?
How about medication? A sweater? A book?
All could be targets of a carry-on ban.
That is one of the reasons so many eyes are watching Pan American Airways, the Portsmouth, N.H.-based successor to the industry giant founded in the 1920s as the epitome of luxury travel. Last week, Pan Am announced a virtual ban on carry-ons as a heightened security measure.
The only exceptions made by Pan Am are for wallets, purses and diaper bags.
Pan Am, which before Sept. 11 was planning to begin serving St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport in the next few months, says passengers so far are taking the restrictions in stride.
It remains to be seen if such tolerance will survive the shock generated by the terrorist assault.
Industry experts generally say that a ban on carry-on luggage is a procedural change that makes no sense and would create havoc both for airports and the flying public.
"Some of these proposals have been knee-jerk reactions, overkill, lightning bolts flying out of the FAA that make no sense at all," said Rick Charles, a specialist in public policy who heads the aviation program at Georgia State University. "The real issue is whether a change solves a security problem. A carry-on ban solves nothing. It's way out of line."
In addition, the impacts would be profound, Charles said.
"For one, it would dramatically change the flow of traffic inside airport terminals," he said. "Everybody would be heading to the baggage pickup areas, which would generate such huge crowds that virtually every airport in the country would have to be redesigned and rebuilt."
Charles, who says he is a fan of the FAA, said carry-ons wouldn't be a problem if the agency would enforce the rules already in place.
"If we reduced carry-on baggage to what it should be, one or two small items, it would go a long way toward helping security," he said. "The searches would be faster and easier and more thorough.
"But people try to carry their whole lives on board. If you get 24 or 25 enormous duffels in a row, you're not going to be able to check through every one and do anywhere near a decent job of it."
Louis Miller, executive director of the Hillsborough County Aviation Authority, was among the first to argue that the FAA's now-lifted ban on curbside check-in added hassle without adding security. He said he doesn't expect to see a carry-on ban.
"I don't think it will come to that," Miller said. "You have to do a more thorough job at the checkpoints. You need to strictly enforce the limit of two carry-ons and the size, and if that doesn't do the job, cut it to one carry-on. You have to allow one."
There is technology in the market that would, for a price, ensure much more thorough screening of baggage, both carry-on and checked, than equipment used in airports today. Ancore Corp. of Santa Clara, Calif., has worked for years on creating such systems for use in aviation security, border inspection and counterterrorism.
"We can generate much better information now than we've had available in the past in air travel," said Patrick Shea, chief operating officer of Ancore. "Our equipment analyzes what materials are present, not what shapes there are.
"The equipment at airports today looks for shapes of guns and knives. We can find an explosive, regardless of what shape it's been formed into. We can look at a corked bottle and tell you whether there's wine inside or a liquid explosive."
"El Al (the Israeli airline) has a tremendous security record, and they allow carry-ons because they spend a lot more time with the bags and the passengers," Shea said. "Of course, nobody can read a terrorist's mind and know of plans to turn an airplane into a flying bomb, and no one piece of equipment is going to be the magic wand that fixes everything. But you can make carry-ons safe."
A ban on carry-on luggage is still being considered. Some passengers say that's okay with them -- to a point.