TSA Ripped At Security Conference
By now it is clear that the USA Transport Security Administration (TSA) delivers attitude plus an enforcement-driven agenda to air cargo.
But if the agency listens at all to what the market is saying, TSA should think a bit about the heavy criticism directed toward the agency from many life-long air cargo professionals that attended Lufthansa Cargo's security conference last week in New York.
“Separate but unequal securities,” is how one observer described TSA dealings with all-cargo versus belly lift edicts.
TSA in fact says all air freight transported on board passenger aircraft is a potential means of terrorist attacks and thus officially ranked as highly insecure while boxes and packages flown by all cargo carriers are not regarded as prime target of criminal intents.
"We see different risk potentials because the threat factor on passenger and cargo is different," stated Ed Kelly, the Transportation Security Administration's General Manager during the U.S. Security Conference held by Lufthansa Cargo on September 30, at Garden City, Long Island.
Consequently, the TSA mandates different levels of shipment screening from the industry: 100% on all U.S. domestic passenger flights already under way, 50% of in- and outbound transport as of Feb. 9, next year, and 100% on all passenger flights commencing in August 2010.
Kelly and his TSA's security architecture was opposed by most participants who strongly recommended a single standard for both passenger and all-cargo air freight.
"You are just as dead if you are hit by a passenger plane or a cargo plane," Howard Safir, former Police Commissioner of NYC said.
"Airplanes with their hundreds of gallons of kerosene are potential weapons with no difference, if freighters or passenger aircraft," Safir said, leaving no doubt that TSA's policy doesn’t sound right or doesn’t even nearly convince him that it is sound.
Captain Bill McReynolds of FedEx and Chairman ALPA's Committee on Cargo Security added.
"Air cargo security must be a part of a multi-layered approach to protect airline crews, passengers, airplanes and cargo shipments from threat.”
So far “TSA's concept has focused on passenger airlines and little has been done to air cargo security," the pilot and transportation leader and expert said.
“The imposed February 50% deadline for x-raying passenger cargo seems to be a highly ambitious undertaking since the TSA has not even validated the screening devices yet.”
"We have meanwhile been audited by TSA experts but did not get any feedback which of our products and devices fully complies with the administration's requirements," said Hans Zirwes, General Manager of Wiesbaden-based Smiths Heimann GmbH when approached by Air Cargo News FlyingTypers.
Only when this infrastructural topic is solved however, can agents, warehouse tenants and airlines begin to place their orders for licensed screening equipment. "From the very day we get the purchase order we will need about three months to produce the x-ray machines if we don't have them in stock," Zirwes emphasizes.
Other devices producers will need a comparable timeframe for starting their mass production of x-ray machines.
The technical infrastructure however, is only one precondition of having masses of shipments being screened. The other is trained personnel who can only get to work after the devices are delivered and put in place.
Both unsolved preconditions and ample space needed for installing the equipment at airports or warehouses make it highly unlikely that February 9 can be maintained as launching day for the 50% x-raying of air cargo.
Instead, most likely is a transition time of some months to give the cargo industry a chance to comply TSA's mandate.
This move was recommended by a number of high ranking representatives at the security event but Ed Kelly did not wave the white flag by scrapping the February deadline.
Rather the executive cited his “mandate”.
“The 50% and 100% milestones are fast approaching, congressionally mandated and therefore not flexible," he declared.
Other critics favored a different architecture to increase air freight security.
John Hansman, Professor Aeronautics and Astronautics at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology favored a 'Swiss Cheese Model' with different security layers, from canines to scanning, bio-sensors or manual inspection of shipments.
"This variable layer architecture is the better long term strategy delivering higher security than the single approach screening concept."
But no matter what security concept might finally be imposed by the U.S. administration everybody agreed on one aspect: the additional costs security will demand.
Klaus Holler, Lufthansa Cargo VP The Americas in his final remarks noted:
"We had to make a tremendous investment in security.
“Therefore, a screening fee will have to be imposed or fares increased."
Meanwhile Lufthansa reported a major benefit due to tightened security:
"Ever since we implemented our security hub system, thefts have dropped by 98 percent," announced proud Harald Zielinski, the German cargo carrier's Head of Security and Environmental Management at the New York meeting.
Still you might wonder, with important deadlines coming and going for air cargo security, how is it possible for TSA to present itself as stoic, inflexible and impenetrable?
If last weeks round of emergency USA government financial bailout activity proved anything, it is that there is indeed flexibility and sense, above partisan politics, for the common good.
The TSA has some politically-driven decrees with deadlines on one hand.
On the other TSA can listen and learn and act in an enlightened manner and stop pointing fingers and snapping off demands as answers like they did last week in Garden City.
World transportation deserves better.
Kudos to Lufthansa Cargo for hosting this important event.
Heiner/Geoffrey