- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The
United States is wasting huge sums of money on technology meant to thwart
attacks on airliners when it should rely more on profiling to identify
would-be terrorists, the trade group for U.S. airlines said on Thursday.
-
- "I think we're not on the right track yet,"
Malcolm Armstrong of the Air Transport Association of America told a congressionally
mandated commission. "We're going to wind up spending a billion dollars
on technology that is not deserving of that much money."
-
- Armstrong is senior vice president for operations and
safety at the association, whose 22 member airlines carry more than 95
percent of the passenger and cargo traffic in the United States.
-
- At a public meeting of the Commission on the Future of
the U.S. Aerospace Industry, he said airline security should be based on
stepped-up intelligence-gathering -- notably on those fitting the profile
of a hijacker -- backed by such things as cockpit fortifications and enhanced
check-in precautions.
-
- The United States began deploying up to 1,100 large explosive-detection
machines, each costing about $1 million, at airports nationwide after the
Sept. 11 hijackings of four U.S. commercial airliners led to attacks that
killed more than 3,000 people.
-
- By Dec. 31, thousands of smaller machines also are slated
to be installed to sniff for traces of explosives in checked baggage.
-
- Among the big players in the business are Lockheed Martin
Corp., Boeing Co. and Northrop Grumman Corp., the No. 1, No. 2 and No.
3 U.S. defense contractors, respectively. Another big contractor, Raytheon
Co., has been involved in installations.
-
- 'THE GOVERNMENT OUGHT TO BE PAYING'
-
- Airlines and airports are getting stuck with an "inordinate"
share of the bill for the new technology, Armstrong added in a telephone
interview.
-
- "The government ought to be paying for this stuff,"
he said.
-
- Armstrong said the federal government, not the airlines,
should take responsibility for handling aviation security "end to
end."
-
- "And the front-end of that piece should be intelligence-gathering
-- information about what the threats are, who the threats are, where those
threats are, where they intend to be," he said. "You follow the
profiles of the activity that you are trying to discover."
-
- Profiling is criticized by some as unfairly boosting
scrutiny of ethnic minorities.
-
- The airlines have been hard hit by declining demand and
rising security costs sparked by the Sept. 11 attacks.
-
- Duane Woerth, president of the Air Line Pilots Association,
told the commission that stepped-up user fees, especially a $5-per travel
leg post-Sept. 11 security add-on, were killing U.S. airlines, not labor
costs.
-
- U.S. airlines' labor costs were about 15 percent lower
than those of their European competitors but user fees were about double
in the United States, said Woerth, whose association represents 66,000
pilots flying for 43 airlines in the United States and Canada.
-
- User fees total about $44 on a $100 U.S. passenger airline
ticket, declining to about 26 percent on a $200 ticket, Armstrong told
the commission.
-
-
-
-
- Copyright © 2002 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly
prohibited without the written consent of Reuters Limited
|
