Security Gaps at Sky Harbor

Having pointed out the gaps in security at one civil aviation airport in the Valley, I would be remiss if I didn't address the security issues raised recently at Sky Harbor. On Monday, July 23, 2007, Paul Armes, the federal security director at Sky Harbor International Airport was placed on leave after the local ABC affiliate, Channel 15, KNXV, aired a video tape of airport employees carrying bags, backpacks, boxes and other items entering the "sterile" zone or airside part of the terminals without passing through any security check beyond showing their employee badges. The employees were entering the normally secure area between midnight and 4:30 a.m. Because no commercial flights arrive or depart during this 4.5 hour period, no Transportation Security Administration (TSA) personnel were on duty and no X-ray machines or metal detectors were operating. Security was being handled by contract security guards.

The security gap everyone is talking about is rather obvious: unscreened packages were being brought into a secure area, an area with access to not only planes but also the tarmac and airport ground vehicles and facilities including fuel tanks and tankers. Being obvious, the gap is relatively easy to close and, in fact, the TSA has already done so by taking over security and operating screening of all individuals, employees and passengers, entering the airside portion of the airport 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

"TSA and our partners at Sky Harbor were rapidly able to close a potential loophole in aviation security," David Beecroft, Western Area Director for the TSA said in a written statement to the media. "Ensuring airport and aviation security at all hours of the day is paramount and we were able to fortify any deviations from that undertaking literally the same day we became aware of the issue."

This statement is misleading in implying that providing 24/7 security at all airports is a goal of the TSA. It is not. There is no national requirement that the TSA provide such round the clock services. More subtly, the statement implies that the TSA has policies and procedures in place for the screening of airport employees both during and after hours.

In fact, the TSA only announced plans to improve employee screening in April 2007. The first 90 days, which, based on the date the effort was revealed to the media would have ended less than a week before Armes suspension, were to be spent forming a working group with the American Association of Airport Executives (AAAE), the Airports Council International - North America (ACI-NA) and the National Air Transportation Association (NATA). The goal of the working group was to develop the standards for employee screening and a timeline for implementing them. A phased rollout of the plan developed by the working group was to follow.

No announcement has been made to indicate that the working group has completed their standards or developed a plan. Even if they have, it is unlikely that a plan that was 90 days in the making could be rolled out in all 452 commercial airports in the country in less than a week.

Until the media revealed the gaps in Phoenix, there doesn't seem to have been a great deal of urgency to improve employee screening, although the April announcement indicates it was at least on the radar screen for the TSA and other airport groups. This lack of urgency is apparent in the testimony of Greg Principato, President of ACI - NA, before the U.S. house Subcommittee on Transportation Security and Infrastructure Protection in which he emphasized that "airports have an effective regime in place to screen individuals with access to secured areas including extensive FBI background checks, checks against the federal terrorist watch lists and security threat assessments; access control systems and initial and recurrent security training for employees." Perhaps this is why TSA executives are so confident that the security gaps discovered in Phoenix had not endangered passengers or the public.

It should be noted that while explosives were the weapon most widely used against airports and airlines between 1970 and 2004 (the most recent year for which statistics are available), airport employees were not the ones delivering the explosives to the target. The tragic events of September 11, 2001 serve as reminders that attacks on American aviation can result in significant loss of life. Fortunately, attacks on airports and aviation in the United States have been rare.

Also worth noting is the Department of Homeland Security believes Al Qaida continues to have an interest in aviation as a potential target. As a nation, America relies almost exclusively on airlines as a means of commercial passenger traffic, so any possible threat, and any security gaps, must be taken seriously, not just by those like the TSA who are employed to keep aviation safe but also by the flying public. We owe it to ourselves.

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Copyright 2007
Informed Ideas