IN THE DAYS following the terrorist attack on New York and Washington last week, an employee of a major U.S. airline read to Florida congressman John Mica the procedures his carrier instructs its pilots to adopt in the event of a hijacking. The chairman of the House aviation subcommittee calls them “outdated,” but he’s being diplomatic. As Mica recalls, the guidelines include a mixture of reverse-Helsinki Syndrome psychology—”Try to befriend the hijacker”— and Cold War phantasm—”When you land in Havana, try to notify the Swiss Embassy.” Precisely what actions onboard employees should take in the event of a hijacking are secret. Other than to say they are designed to be non-confrontational, aviation officials refuse to divulge specific techniques. “We don’t want to give advantages to anybody,” says John Mazor, spokesman for the Air Line Pilots Association. “There’s always going to be kooks and copycats.” But if their actions in the immediate aftermath are any indication of what’s to come, the copycats Americans should be most worried about are the ones crafting new airport security measures. The first response to the crisis by federal aviation players was a double dose of the medicine that didn’t work. Last Wednesday, Transportation secretary Norman Mineta issued a handful of emergency procedures in response to the terrorist hijackings. These included the suspension of curbside check-in, allowing only ticketed passengers in airport gate areas, and prohibiting all knife-like instruments with blades under four inches long. Aviation folks say these are temporary procedures, but they give a sense of the direction airline officials will be taking in the weeks and months ahead as new policies are crafted. And that’s not reassuring. So far the likely effect seems to be longer waiting lines, increased flight delays, and the banning of knives at airport restaurants—it’s forks and spoons only, now. What’s more, the procedures still don’t work. Last Thursday three Northwest Airlines employees deliberately walked through security at the Phoenix airport with a pocketknife and a corkscrew. That a corkscrew has now been deemed a weapon gives one a sense of the impossibility of this approach. After all, if a corkscrew is a weapon, then conceivably one could hijack a plane with a fork. Nonetheless, the big players seem to think these are all reasonable ideas. After day-long meetings with FAA officials last Wednesday regarding Mineta’s measures, the pilots’ union “came to the conclusion that, as short-term solutions go, these were sufficient.” Meanwhile, an FAA spokesman reacts with hostility to the idea that the new guidelines may be half-baked. “They ‘may have been a bit hasty’?” he mocks. “No, no! Why would you say that?” But a spokes-woman for the Association of Flight Attendants admits, “From the information we have, it doesn’t seem that these new security procedures would have been able to stop these terrorist acts from happening. I’m not sure they’re matched up that well.” The problem, in a nutshell, is that the sort of solution that would have a chance of foiling an attack like last Tuesday’s would involve not just changing a procedure here and there, but altering a mindset—the sense of complacency that says safety and security can be left to trained government officials—and confronting two political taboos, profiling and guns. A sensible approach, for example, might include permitting pilots to carry sidearms. “I very much favor it,” says Mica. “At least give our people a fighting chance.” But whether the initiative will have a fighting chance in Washington is doubtful: The unions are staunchly against it. “That’s a non-starter,” says the Pilots’ Association. “We don’t need to make these situations more dangerous than they are,” say the flight attendants. And what’s wrong with profiling passengers? Certain groups of people have higher rates of hijacking, and not to regard them more closely is naive and dangerous. “No question about it,” says Porter Goss, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. “You’re going to see a great debate on this regarding our freedoms and our safeguards.” Which is not to say the steps so far are wholly inadequate. Armed “sky marshals” have already been placed on some flights, and a number of legislators are agitating to make this practice widespread, if not permanent. Given that two of the hijackers bought tickets under names that were on FBI “watch lists,” a combining of law enforcement and some intelligence databases seems probable. Next-generation planes will likely have thicker and more armored bulkheads, to protect the flight cabin more thoroughly. But, as with the FAA’s new guidelines, there are disturbing signs that lawmakers and bureaucrats will simply repackage existing procedures and market them as New and Improved. Traditional interest-group politics is alive and well. “We feel the weakest link is security workers at the airports,” says the flight attendants’ union spokeswoman. “They barely make a living wage, and turnover is very high.” Yes, unionizing airport security workers. We should feel safer already.
