=20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SF Gate. The original article can be found on SFGate.com here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=3D/chronicle/archive/2002/07= /13/BU82734.DTL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Saturday, July 13, 2002 (SF Chronicle) El Al stands alone/Experts doubt U.S. airlines can or should emulate Israel= i carrier's security standards David Armstrong, Chronicle Staff Writer Armed guards at El Al Israel Airlines were praised for their bold respon= se in the Fourth of July shootings at Los Angeles International Airport, when they wrestled a gun-wielding man to the floor and shot him dead after he killed two innocent people. Their prompt action probably stopped him from killing more people. The shootout has renewed questions about the need for increased security at U.S. airports. However, it is extremely doubtful whether any U.S. airline can emulate t= he pervasive security measures developed by El Al, a small, government-run flag carrier in a nation long besieged by enemies. Although El Al passengers have been attacked in airports (notably in Europe in the 1980s), no El Al aircraft has been hijacked since 1968, and the Israeli carrier is widely regarded as having the best airline security in the world. By contrast, in the United States, ground security is left to airports a= nd a welter of overlapping local, state and federal law enforcement agencies to sort out. "We are not charged with security anymore, except for what happens at the gate," said Chris Brathwaite, a spokesman for United Airlines, which handles half of all passengers and flights at San Francisco International Airport. United, he said, does not employ El Al-style armed guards. United has proposed arming its pilots with Taser stun guns, and the House of Representatives on Thursday passed a bill that would authorize some pilots to pack firearms in the cockpit of commercial jetliners. El Al does not arm its pilots, but it does put up to five armed sky marshals on every flight, according to published reports. (El Al representatives could not be reached for comment for this story.) Brathwaite said United works closely on a wide range of issues with the Transportation Security Administration, created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The agency is charged with overseeing the conversion of most baggage screeners from private employees hired by the airlines to federal employees. It also is coordinating a security transition from the National Guard to local and state law enforcement patrols in passenger terminals. "We're not going to go into airports like LAX and SFO like a bull in a china shop and say, 'Here we are,' " said agency spokesman Leonardo Alcivar. "We do have oversight authority for airports. We work with local and state law enforcement personnel, like the SFPD in San Francisco, as they deploy their personnel." On July 6, two days after the LAX shooting, the security administration said it would send its own armed guards into passenger terminals. Alcivar later ascribed the announcement to other confused agency spokesmen and emphasized the agency has no such plans. El Al is the only airline that employs its own armed guards in U.S. airports, Alcivar said. No U.S. carrier, he said, has told the security administration it wants to post armed guards because of the July 4 killings. In any case, aviation experts say having armed guards is just one of many things that sets El Al apart. U.S.-based carriers spend just 0.5 percent of their annual budgets on security, according to the Air Transport Association. Published reports put El Al's security expenditures at 8 percent of its budget, or 16 times higher than the U.S. industry average. That buys a lot of security, such as armed sky marshals on every flight, hand inspection of every checked suitcase and carry-on bag, steel-reinforced cockpit doors on all El Al aircraft and preboarding interviews of every passenger that can last for hours. Then there is the difference in scale. David Stempler, president of the Air Travelers Association, said El Al's small size and the compactness of Israel are security assets. "They have one major commercial airport over there. We have 429 airports over here," Stempler said. "El Al carries 2 million passengers a year. We have that many in a day." Michael Boyd, an aviation industry consultant in Evergreen, Colo., said = El Al is in a security league of its own and will probably stay there. The painstaking and intrusive passenger screening that El Al does as a matter of course just wouldn't fly here. "El Al is a unique case," Boyd said, pointing out that the Israeli airli= ne routinely uses ethnicity and religion as key features of its passenger profiling. That would run afoul of American civil liberties. But while the United States may not want to clone El Al's profiling system, U.S. airlines can and should fine-tune their passenger screening, said the Air Travelers Association's David Stempler. Stempler supports a trusted traveler identity card for frequent fliers a= nd for airport and airline employees who have been thoroughly vetted and determined to be trustworthy nonterrorists. "It would be reverse profiling," he said. "It would mean these people are OK; we don't need to worry about them. Then we can concentrate our resources on people who are a threat, wherever they are in the airport." E-mail David Armstrong at david armstrong@sfchronicle.com.=20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2002 SF Chronicle