STATEMENT
OF
CAPTAIN DUANE E. WOERTH, PRESIDENT
AIR LINE PILOTS ASSOCIATION, INTERNATIONAL
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT
MANAGEMENT,
RESTRUCTURING AND THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
THE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ON
AIRLINE SECURITY IMPROVEMENTS
NOVEMBER 14, 2001
My name is Duane Woerth, and I am the
President of the Air Line Pilots Association,
International. ALPA represents 67,000
airline pilots who fly for 47 U.S. and Canadian
airlines. We sincerely thank you Chairman
Durbin for inviting ALPA to present its views
before this hearing.
Before proceeding into my formal remarks, I would
like to express ALPA’s most sincere
sympathies to the families of the victims of
American flight 587, that crashed on Monday in
Belle Harbor, New York. ALPA stands ready
to help in the aftermath of this tragedy in any
way that we can be of assistance.
It is a difficult time to be an airline pilot
– Monday’s accident only adds to those
difficulties. In addition to the stress
that nearly every American is feeling over the
attacks against this country and the ongoing war
in Afghanistan, the past two months have resulted
in a severe financial strain on our industry.
That has affected not only our own pilot members,
some of whom have been furloughed or lost their
jobs, but every other airline employee, and the
millions of people whose livelihoods are directly
dependent upon a strong airline industry.
The airlines’ third quarter was a financial
disaster for U.S. major airlines – the nine
largest carriers collectively reported $2.43
billion in net losses in that period. One
airline executive stated recently that “the
industry in totality is burning through cash at
an alarming rate, debt is rising, and revenue . .
. remains far short of what’s necessary to
match high costs, many of which are fixed.”
In short, unless the airlines are able to bring
more passengers back to the airplanes at fares
that meet or exceed costs, dire financial straits
are inevitable, not only for the carriers but
also for those many industries that rely on them
as well. As you likely know, Canada 3000,
one of our member airlines, last week declared
its insolvency and has ceased operations due in
large measure to the contraction of air travel.
It is clear that too many passengers are still
afraid to fly, despite the aviation security
advances made since September 11th.
The traveling public needs to know what kind of
improvements have been made, and are being made,
in order to bolster their confidence to return to
air travel – this hearing should help in
that regard.
Let me say as emphatically as I can that ALPA and
its safety-conscious, professional pilot members
believe that it is safe to fly and prove
it each and every day when they go to work.
The traveling public should take note of that
fact, but there is more that can be said to
further reassure air travelers. The events
of September 11th have created a very
high level of security awareness by pilots,
flight attendants, gate agents and all other
airline employees. That awareness
translates directly into a more secure operation,
because it means that pilots and flight
attendants are coordinating and communicating
more than ever before to ensure that each flight
is secure. We know of several instances
where pilots have delayed flights in order to
resolve a question or eliminate an area of
concern.
Additionally, on September 11th the
terrorists held a major advantage over their
victims with the element of surprise. There
will likely be no such advantage in any acts of
air piracy in the foreseeable future. The
level of security awareness among passengers, as
it is among crews, is also very high, which
further reduces the potential for another
terrorist attack. It is hard to imagine a
hijacking in today’s environment that is not
countered in the most aggressive possible fashion
by everyone onboard. This means that the
era of automatically assuming that a hijacker
wants to live through an act of air piracy for
the purposes of extortion has ended, and a more
aggressive reaction will be used in all future
hijackings.
DOT Security Recommendations
There are concrete measures underway to make
aviation more secure, too. I was honored to
be named as a member of Transportation Secretary
Mineta’s Rapid Response Team on Aircraft
Security, which was convened shortly after the
September 11th attacks. That
group, and its counterpart on airport security,
made a combined 33 recommendations on ways in
which to improve our security system. Some
of those recommendations are short-term measures
and others will take longer.
One of the short-term actions that is nearly
complete is “hardening” of cockpit
doors. The airlines have worked very
diligently over the past several weeks to
strengthen the existing cockpit doors on our
airliners. At least 11 operators of large
aircraft report that their entire fleets have
been fitted with gantry bars and other types of
hardening devices. Operators of smaller
jets and turboprop aircraft report that they are
also making significant progress toward beefing
up the doors on their fleets. These
enhancements make it more difficult for a
terrorist to commandeer an aircraft today. But
there is an ongoing effort to develop standards
for retrofitting new, high technology cockpit
doors to the existing fleet of aircraft that are
capable of withstanding gun shots, sledgehammer
blows and other types of forced-entry.
Another example of a near-term enhancement is the
use of the Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening
System (CAPPS), which the FAA ordered to be used
for all passengers as of September 28th.
Many of the other recommendations I would define
as “works in progress,” which will take
longer to implement – I will discuss some of
them in my further remarks.
One Level of Security
I know that you are interested in learning of
our perspective on the consistency with which
airport security improvements are being
implemented. I regretfully inform you
that airline pilots are not yet seeing any
evidence of our goal of One Level of Security.
What we are seeing instead is a disturbing level
of non-uniformity in security screening from
airport to airport and even terminal to terminal
within the same airport. Security practices
to protect a B-747 freighter are still far less
stringent than those for a passenger-carrying B-747,
even though both aircraft could be used as
terrorist-guided missiles.
Security screening practices are particularly
inconsistent, and they are both exasperating and
frustrating to passengers and airline pilots, who
may be screened several different ways at several
different airports in a single day. Screening
companies, in well-intended but misguided zeal,
have directed their screeners to confiscate small
personal items, such as nail files and other
little objects – we know of one screener who
confiscated an electric razor! At some
checkpoints, even after walking through a portal-type
metal detector with no alarm sounding,
individuals are asked to remove their shoes,
their person is inspected with a hand-held metal
detector, and then they are patted down.
The bottom line is that inconsistent, even
illogical, screening practices are doing little
for security and they are eroding the confidence
that the traveling public has in the security
system, which makes it all the more difficult for
the industry to rebound. Fortunately, this
problem is one that can be addressed, at least in
part, quickly and effectively. The
situation exists in substantial measure because
the FAA, with few exceptions, allows the airlines
to exceed the agency’s broadly written
security regulations and related guidance as they
see fit.
What is needed is a single, security-checkpoint
screening standard for use by all screeners to
help achieve One Level of Security. In
fact, such a standard already exists, but it is
not being used for that purpose. The
airline organizations several years ago developed
a standardized, screening-procedures document
called the Checkpoint Operations Guide (COG),
which is used by screeners to some extent, but is
not a regulatory document. We have recently
recommended to the FAA, and received a favorable
first reaction to the concept of making the COG
regulatory and training all screener personnel to
strictly follow it. This simple action
would begin to restore public confidence in the
system and could be accomplished within a matter
of a few days or weeks. It would also
establish a uniform standard that could be used,
and/or modified as necessary, by the screeners
who are hired after the President signs the
airline security bill now under consideration by
Congress.
There is another short-term measure that
deserves immediate attention, namely, development
of a new Common Strategy (CS). The current
CS was developed by the FAA, FBI, ALPA and
airlines in the 1970’s as a result of the
Cuban hijacking crisis. The CS has served
the industry well for many years and brought
numerous extortion-type hijackings to peaceful
conclusions. However, the CS’s methods
were never intended for acts of air piracy by
suicidal terrorists – from September 11th
on, it is unlikely that any pilot is going to
rely on those methods. In fact, in the
absence of a new CS, pilots have been forced to
develop their own hijacking strategies, none of
which are common, known or approved by the FAA
and FBI. We have strongly encouraged the
FAA to assert leadership in this important arena
and convene the meetings necessary to establish a
new CS.
We urge the Senate to support our efforts in both
this area and in that of adopting the COG as the
security screening standard.
Additional Security Measures
Following is a list of some of the more
important security issues and initiatives that we
believe should be given urgent attention.
Universal Access System
ALPA has been promoting the need for
positive, electronic verification of identity and
electronic airport access control systems since
1987 – shortly after the downing of PSA
flight 1771 by an armed, disgruntled, former
airline employee. This mass murder, which
bore similarities to the hijackings of September
11th, was attributable in large
measure to identity-verification inadequacies
that have yet to be addressed 14 years later.
In the late 1980’s, airports installed
computerized access control systems that included
airport employees and tenants’ airport-based
employees. Left out of the group of trusted
individuals whose identity needs to be
electronically verified were all transient
airline employees and transient, armed law
enforcement officers. Every employee who
enters airport secured areas should be identified
electronically so that there is confidence that
only those personnel who have authorization are
able to gain access. Without secure
identity verification, a terrorist can purchase
or steal a pilot uniform and, using fraudulent
credentials, gain access to the aircraft and
cockpit under false pretenses. This
identification deficiency also enables terrorists
to purchase or steal a law enforcement officer
uniform and be processed through the security-screening
checkpoint while armed. Undercover GAO
inspectors revealed this security deficiency
publicly in an April 2000 U.S. House of
Representatives’ hearing.
In the mid-1990’s the FAA, with ALPA’s
urging and congressional funding, performed a
test of what came to be known as the Universal
Access System (UAS). Two million taxpayer
dollars were spent on those tests involving two
major airlines and four large airports. For
all practical purposes, those funds were wasted.
Although the FAA completed successful tests of
the UAS and standards were finalized for the
system in 1998, there has been no implementation
by any airline of the system, per stated
congressional intent. This failure comes as
a result of an FAA policy to leave UAS
implementation to the sole discretion of the
carriers.
Although magnetic stripe technology was used as
the basis for UAS tests, there are now several
advanced, mature technologies that could be used
to positively identify authorized personnel.
The FAA is expected to complete its recent tests
of a Memory Chip Card (MCC) system for
identifying armed law enforcement officers in the
near future. This technology is much more
secure than magnetic stripe and has the
additional capability of storing an extensive
amount of data that can be used for both security
and other types of uses.
The FAA has stated that these same readers could
also be used by airlines for issuance of MCC
cards to their employees. ALPA is
recommending that the airlines use the MCC, or an
equally-secure technology, as the basis for UAS
and several other important functions, including
the following:
- Positive
verification of identity at the screening
checkpoint to enable transient employees
to be processed more quickly. Passengers
are enduring long lines at the security
screening checkpoint. These lines
are made longer by the screening of
pilots, flight attendants and other
individuals in positions of trust, who
are often screened several times a day.
The lack of equipment for positively
identifying these individuals means that
they must go through the security-screening
checkpoint, which wastes limited
screening resources and further
inconveniences the traveling public.
- Identity
verification for jumpseat riders.
Use of the jumpseat by commuting pilots
is an absolute necessity in today’s
airline environment. Unfortunately,
that privilege has been severely
curtailed since shortly after the
terrorist attacks because there is no way
to positively verify the jumpseat
requester’s identity and employment
status.
- A
platform for digital pilot licenses and
medical information. We
envision that the same card, or type of
card, could be used by the FAA for
containing a pilot’s license and
medical information. ALPA is
working with FAA Flight Standards on this
concept. The MCC card has more than
sufficient memory for this purpose and
others that the airlines may develop.
One important aspect of
UAS is the need to select a single
technology for use by all transient airline
employees, hence the name “universal.”
Use of multiple technologies for the same
purposes will equate to unnecessary duplication
of effort, equipment, and expense.
We urge the Senate to give its full support to
the expedited installation of MCC card readers at
all U.S. airports’ security screening
checkpoints, per the FAA’s stated
intentions, and the use of this or an equivalent
technology for the creation of a high-tech,
highly secure UAS.
Related to the subject of UAS is the positive
identification, and smarter screening, of
trustworthy passengers. One of the
weaknesses of our current security checkpoint
systems is that persons in positions of trust (e.g.,
pilots, airport directors, airline managers) and
passengers who can be identified as being
trustworthy (e.g, Senators), are given the same
level of security scrutiny as those about whom
little or nothing is known. Security
screening will likely be a slow process for the
foreseeable future, at least until such time as
new higher-speed technologies are brought to bear.
As such, it is imperative that we develop a means
of identifying persons who can be trusted and
process them more rapidly through screening
checkpoints. Doing so will provide the
added benefit of spending finite security
resources on those unknown individuals who could
pose a risk to flight security.
To that end, the airline and airport
organizations are now calling for trustworthy
passengers to be issued a “smart” card
for identification at the screening checkpoint.
Conceptually, such individuals would be processed
more quickly than those without such a card at a
special lane created for this purpose. ALPA
supports this recommendation, provided that the
passengers voluntarily submit to a thorough
background check in order to receive this card;
the background check should be updated at least
annually in order to retain it.
Protect Against Terrorist Attacks at the
Airport
Seemingly lost in the necessary rush to
protect aircraft against future acts of air
piracy is the threat posed by terrorists to
airport terminal occupants. Two deadly
attacks were launched against the Rome and Vienna
airports in the past and we must expect that
Osama bin Laden’s forces could use such
terrorism against U.S. airports as well. Our
airports are vulnerable to an attack by
terrorists who could shoot at, or use bombs or
other weapons against, crowds in close proximity
to ticket counters and check-in facilities.
At some airports, lines of passengers waiting at
these counters and security checkpoints even
extend outside! For that reason, airports
must institute much stronger vehicle control
measures at airports.
Included in such measures should be: continuous
monitoring of passenger loading and unloading
areas on the landside of airport terminals by
trained, armed, law enforcement personnel using
binoculars, wireless communication devices, bomb
detection equipment, K-9’s and so forth; a
means of quickly routing suspect vehicles away
from airport terminal areas; a constant presence
of armed law enforcement officers in terminals
and conducting random perimeter inspections; and
other such measures.
Accordingly, ALPA recommends that the National
Guard personnel assigned to secure the inside
of airport terminals be reassigned to the outside
for the duties listed above until such time as
airports are capable of staffing these duties on
their own. National Guard personnel are not
trained to perform security screening and are of
little assistance when posted at checkpoints, per
their current use. These military personnel
could perform an invaluable service, however, if
used outside to (1) monitor the arrivals of
vehicular traffic at airport terminals and (2)
wield lethal force against terrorists who might
attack passengers occupying these facilities.
Armed guards with K-9’s outside airports are
common sights in European airports – they
need to be common sights here as well.
Perimeter security at many airports in the United
States offers the potential terrorist an
opportunity to easily access commercial aviation.
Hundreds of miles of unguarded fencing,
uncontrolled access points, and inadequate
security fencing exist at numerous major U.S.
airports. One airport that has approached
this problem in a very effective manner is Narita
International Airport in Tokyo, Japan. That
airport has built security watchtowers,
implemented motion/sound sensors, developed
interior/exterior perimeter barriers and “no-man’s
land” at some junctions. Additionally,
the fence is approximately 12 feet high with
pressure points at the top that snap off at a
weight of approximately 50 pounds, so as to
defeat anyone from scaling the fencing. In
addition, irregular foot and vehicle patrols with
night-vision capabilities traverse the areas.
This kind of dedicated approach to perimeter
security is needed in the U.S. and the equipment
is available from numerous vendors to implement
it.
New Explosive Detection System Research
The FAA is to be applauded for its
cooperative efforts with the airlines and
equipment manufacturers to create new security
screening devices, such as the computed
tomography (CT) explosive detection systems and
trace equipment now used at U.S. airports. These
devices are quite capable of finding bombs and
contribute greatly to airline security.
The weakness of both technologies is that they
are slow and the CT equipment is large and
expensive. ALPA’s goal is to achieve
100% screening of both checked and carry-on items
in order to thwart the carriage of bombs,
weapons, hazardous materials, radioactive
materials, and chemical/biological agents.
This will be no easy task, but it is one that the
research and development community needs to
expedite and one for which the government should
provide appropriate resources. Our
discussions with FAA security R&D personnel
convince us that they share our views and
concerns about the need for expedited research on
the next generation of faster, smaller and more
effective bag screening equipment.
FAA and industry were developing “Secure
Flow,” a blueprint for addressing all of the
various threat “vectors” that pose a
risk to the airport environs and aircraft, even
before September 11th. One fundamental
characteristic of Secure Flow is the expedited
movement of passengers and carry-on items through
the security-screening checkpoint. ALPA
strongly supports ongoing research aimed at
seamlessly and unobtrusively detecting bombs and
weapons of all types that may be carried on one’s
body. FAA has performed research with the
scientific community on various types of
technologies that are capable of detecting threat
objects without physically touching the
individual. The challenge for this
particular effort will be to obtain an acceptable
level of equipment reliability, effectiveness,
size and cost.
Create a Photo Manifest of All
Passengers and Their Checked Bags
Similar to the problem of employee identity
verification, the airlines are not currently
capable of positively determining who has boarded
their aircraft. This is demonstrated when
aircraft leave the gate with an inaccurate
manifest; we know of one airline that routinely
allows flights to leave the gate with up to a two-person
error. As another example, after one
accident last year, an airline CEO made a public
request for assistance in identifying the
passengers on his own aircraft! The
security ramifications are also substantial
– unless we know that the person boarding
the aircraft is the same one who bought the
ticket, we cannot positively determine that the
individual has been through the security
checkpoint.
Currently available technology can be applied to
this problem in order to create an inexpensive
photo manifest of boarding passengers and their
checked bags. The photo manifest will
enable airlines to, among other things, (1)
positively identify, via digital photograph, each
person boarding the aircraft (2) reduce the
potential of boarding someone who has not been
through screening (3) create a strong deterrence
against fraudulent ticketing (4) quickly identify
a bag(s) that must be removed in the event that
its owner does not board the flight, and (5)
create an accurate passenger manifest that can be
used in the event of an accident or other tragedy.
ALPA has been influential in the development of
such technology and we urge its deployment.
Perform Criminal Background Checks on Aviation
Industry Job Applicants
All personnel seeking employment in the
aviation industry who need access to airline
aircraft or secure airport areas in the
performance of their duties should, effective
immediately, be required to undergo a complete
criminal background check. Technological
development permits criminal background checks to
be completed expeditiously through electronic
fingerprinting. As a national security
issue, the airline industry must create and
maintain the highest personnel hiring standards
in order to protect against “insider”
threats.
Train All Aviation Employees on Security
Awareness
The government, working in concert with
industry should implement the recommendations of
the FAA’s Aviation Security Advisory
Committee’s Employee Utilization Working
Group. The essence of those recommendations
is that all airport, airline, and service
employees can, and should, receive an appropriate
level of training and ongoing information about
how to make aviation more secure.
One noteworthy recommendation of that working
group which has yet to be acted upon is the
creation of a security reporting “hotline”
at all airports for tips, suspicious behavior,
abandoned bags, and other information of use to
the local authorities. This is one
low technology, low-cost answer to the question
of how to make security everyone’s business,
as ALPA has recommended.
Prepare for Chemical/Biological Attacks
We must also prepare for the possibility of a
chemical/biological agent attack in our airports.
Current technology exists that would permit
airports to perform air quality sampling and
monitoring in all areas of the terminals, baggage
facilities, and passenger/visitors areas. Such
monitors could immediately provide an alert to
evacuate the area and notify appropriate
emergency authorities.
Use the U.S. Customs Service
ALPA recommends greater utilization of the U.S.
Customs Service to enhance airport security.
The Customs Service has many responsibilities
that parallel the needs for security at airports,
including contraband, fugitives and illegal
activities of U.S. citizens. As a law
enforcement agency, Customs has the
authority and tools not readily available to the
FAA. The Customs Service has thousands of
agents currently assigned at U.S. international
airports. Customs has the statutory
authority to search persons and cargo and to stop
contraband from coming into or leaving the United
States. These resources could be more
widely used to increase the security at many
airports.
Thank you, again, for the opportunity to appear
today. I would be pleased to respond
to any questions that you may have.
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