Air Safety Week: Bag Match Urged for Continuing as Well as Originating Passengers

Gap needs to be closed, experts declare

Matching passengers to bags did not afflict the industry with a plague of delays, the apocalyptic vision much feared by the airlines, but security would be enhanced by extending bag-match to continuing passengers, according to its advocates.

Positive passenger bag match (PPBM) was one of the options available to the airlines to comply with a Jan. 18 deadline for enhanced security. The deadline was one of the first major hurdles contained in the Aviation and Transportation Security Act (PL 107-71), the most sweeping reform of aviation security mandated by Congress in recent memory (see ASW, Dec. 17, 2001. PPBM was the only means available for the airlines to comply with the act, as there are not enough explosives detection systems (EDS), dog-sniffing teams, or security agents to physically search baggage (see ASW, Dec. 3, 2001)

However, PPBM as put into place has been limited to originating passengers (see ASW, Jan. 21). In the classic definition of PPBM, the concept applies to both originating the continuing passengers, thereby plugging a potential loophole - the passenger who debarks at an intermediate stop, leaving a bag containing a bomb (the unaccompanied or "rogue" bag) still on the airplane as it continues to its next destination.

Indeed, by not including continuing passengers, two levels of security apply. Consider this case: a passenger who originates at Denver, with a stopover at Chicago's O'Hare, and a continuing flight into Washington, DC's Reagan National Airport (DCA). PPBM has been applied to all inbound and outbound flights since DCA's reopening October 4, 2001, but it is clear from testimony at a congressional aviation subcommittee hearing last week that bags and continuing passengers are not reconciled for flights to DCA, even though the airport's delayed resumption of operations was conditional on extra security procedures. In fact, the situation applies nationwide - PPBM applies only to originating passengers.

At the Jan. 23 hearing of the House Aviation Subcommittee, Kenneth Mead, Department of Transportation Inspector General (DOT/IG) lauded the airlines' use of PPBM while declaring its application is incomplete. "The current procedure does not cover passengers and their baggage on connecting flights. This gap needs to be closed because by definition if the passenger is not on the same aircraft as the checked baggage, then it is not a positive passenger bag match."

The situation, Mead said, "creates a higher risk for flights departing hub airports, which are the largest airports in the country."

Prof. Arnold Barnett of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology argued similarly that PPBM should apply to both originating and continuing passengers/bags. Barnett led the successful 1997 field trial for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) of PPBM (see ASW, Nov. 12, 2001). He described the current partial application of PPBM as "dangerous and untenable."

His trenchant testimony shredded the shibboleths and misconceptions surrounding PPBM. We offer major extracts below:

Bag Match - At Last

Introduction

Domestic PPBM began last Friday [Jan. 18], because of the provisions of the 2001 Aviation and Transportation Security Act. I am elated by this development, and believe that it arrived not a moment too soon. Intelligent terrorists know that they are now unlikely to reach the cockpit, and that growing vigilance by travelers and crews makes sabotage less likely in the passenger cabin. Thus, had Congress not acted decisively with its 60-day screening requirement, the luggage compartment could well have become the most promising venue for destroying an aircraft.

Criticism of PPBM

It has been asserted that bag match would greatly disrupt airline operations ... Under PPBM, U.S. domestic overwater flights to Honolulu and San Juan experienced bag-match departure delays averaging less than one minute. That outcome [of the 1997 field trial] was striking because these routes are "hostile" to bag match. They are usually flown with widebody jets, and their passengers generally check bags and often connect from other flights.

It has also been asserted that PPBM offers no protection in itself against suicidal terrorists. That statement is absolutely true. But, historically, very few terrorists who have attacked airplanes have been suicidal. Those who sabotaged Pan Am 103, Air India 182, and UTA 772 were not present when these planes blew up ... The terrorists who plotted in the mid- 1990s to destroy a dozen U.S. jets coming home from Asia - a plot which apparently involved Al Qaeda - were not suicidal ...

And, paradoxically, bag match might help deter some terrorists willing to die. If such a terrorist checks a bag laden with explosives, PPBM forces him to proceed to the gate ready to board his plane. But, now and increasingly in the future, his checked luggage could also be inspected at the airport by other means. If such an inspection revealed his bomb, PPBM restriction on his mobility might mean that he could quickly be located and arrested.

That circumstance is important because even someone willing to die in a successful explosion might be averse to life imprisonment for a failed one. Moreover, a group thinking of dispatching such a terrorist might be unnerved by the prospect that he might soon be under interrogation. The crucial point is that - in combination with other forms of baggage screening - bag match could be useful against suicidal terrorists. It cannot in its own right prevent their success, but it can greatly increase the price of failure.

Limitations of Baggage Screening

I have no doubt that the explosives detection (EDS) machines headed for all U.S. airports are very good. But no one has suggested that they are perfect ... terrorists may be devising new explosives that EDS machines would not detect. And there is always the chance of human error in interpreting inspection results, a problem that could be exacerbated by a high false-alarm rate.

Some Recommendations

(1) Even when EDS machines are fully deployed, PPBM should be continued.

Absent bag match, a terrorist could check a bag with explosives (probably having shown a fake ID), and then race from the airport. If his luggage eludes the EDS machine, his mission would succeed. More likely, the machine will detect his bomb; by the time it does so, however, he could already be in hiding. His mission has failed, but he has lived to kill another day.

Without PPBM to raise the consequences of failure, terrorists could view the EDS machine as a huge roulette wheel. They could continue to play the odds based on its error rate. And, if they persist, we can expect that, eventually, they will win. Especially when PPBM costs so little, it seems imprudent to give it up when the explosives detectors arrive.

(2) No checked bag should be exempted from PPBM because it has passed a screening test like a hand search.

If he [the terrorist] believes that his bomb will elude a hand search, the nonsuicidal terrorist has no desire to board the plane. PPBM, therefore, is sometimes a backup system that can save the day when physical screening would not.

PPBM for Connecting Passengers

An "originating only" policy could allow a terrorist to travel with a suitcase bomb on the first leg of the flight, but to absent himself when it explodes on the second leg. Such a grim scenario may have historical precedent. In 1989, a French DC-10 from Zaire to Paris (UTA 772) exploded over North Africa ... the official inquiry pointedly raised the possibility that a passenger checked a luggage bomb from Zaire to Paris and deboarded at an intermediate stop ...

The airlines strongly oppose connecting-PPBM, contending that it could bring chaos to hub operations ... The 1997 domestic test showed that, of every 2,000 connecting passengers, only one with a checked bag was missing at departure time for his outbound flight. In those rare instances when a bag-pull was required, it delayed the flight seven minutes on average. Indeed, most observed delays during the experiment were tied to originating passengers.

Some numbers offer us some perspective. About 75 percent of the passengers boarding U.S. jets are originating ... Thus, the present PPBM regime already covers three-fourths of jet passengers. If PPBM were extended to connecting passengers during normal conditions, the coverage rate would approach 95 percent. For difficult situations at hubs, PPBM might well have to be modified. If performed skillfully, however, such modifications could go a long way towards avoiding undue delays without compromising passenger safety. I therefore reach a third recommendation to the subcommittee:

(3) PPBM should be expanded as rapidly as possible to domestic connecting passengers.

Especially because the "originating only" policy has been so widely publicized, its continuation poses an unknown degree of danger. The policy is based on the dubious premise that, if we can't readily do connecting bag match in all conditions, we shouldn't do it in any.

Final Comment

There is every reason to fear that terrorists are still fascinated by aviation, and that their further success against airplanes would horrify the American people, devastate the airline industry, and gravely harm the national economy. As with earthquakes, an aftershock to Sept.11 could cause more damage than the original event itself. But the calamity is less likely now because bold decisions by Congress have yielded positive bag match. After a British victory early in the [1982] Falklands War, [Prime Minister] Margaret Thatcher admonished journalists to "just rejoice at that news." All Americans can rejoice that, at long last, unaccompanied checked bags with their attendant dangers are disappearing from the skies over our country. >> Barnett, e-mail abarnett@mit.edu << >TK American Airlines [AMR]: