This article from NYTimes.com has been sent to you by psa188@juno.com. The Strains Are Showing in Air Travel September 11, 2002 By EDWARD WONG The grace period for air travel has ended. Gone are the days of good will after the Sept. 11 attacks, when passengers, airlines and airports were willing to put up with all kinds of intrusive and time-consuming security measures. Gone, too, are the months when carriers desperately wooed frightened travelers by catering to their needs and when well-intentioned federal officials optimistically laid out new safety plans. Now, airlines and airports are vigorously lobbying the government to scale back or modify many of the new safeguards. Passengers are clamoring for more consistent and less exasperating security procedures. And airlines are cutting back on passenger services and creating ticket restrictions they would not have dared put in place before last fall. Hartsfield Atlanta International, the world's busiest airport, is grappling with many of the industry's issues a full year after the terrorists struck, transforming air travel more than any aspect of daily life. The airport serves as a hub for Delta Air Lines, the nation's third-largest carrier, and AirTran Airways, a fast-growing low-fare carrier. Hartsfield also became a symbol last November for the potentially nightmarish future of air travel, when the entire airport was shut for four hours because a passenger ran down an up-escalator to retrieve a camera bag. No single industry was hit harder by the attacks than the airlines, which have lost about $10 billion in the last year. Business travelers are shunning expensive tickets, and only low-cost carriers like AirTran are making money again. Delta lost $1.3 billion in the last three quarters, while AirTran lost $12.1 million. In the most recent quarter, Delta lost $10.80 per thousand available seat miles, while AirTran made $3.40. Besides resorting to drastic cost-cutting efforts to stay aloft, the airlines - along with airports like Hartsfield - are in a heated dispute with the 10-month-old Transportation Security Administration over what security measures should be trimmed because they are driving away passengers. Still, many people blame the airlines' hiring of cheap security contractors for the lax procedures before Sept. 11, and some experts say that several streamlining ideas by the carriers, like hastily creating a "trusted traveler" program to speed passengers and employees through checkpoints, could be costly and cumbersome. The airlines are openly resentful of security measures that they say have scared away customers, especially on short-haul flights. "The T.S.A. has the best intentions in the world," said Frederick W. Reid, Delta's president. "But unless you keep the law enforcement focus and add customer service and efficiency to it, you will kill aviation." Delta has been one of the most outspoken airlines about scrapping certain security procedures, like searching carry-on bags at the boarding gate. The chief executive, Leo F. Mullin, made several trips to Washington over the summer to talk with federal officials about overhauling parts of the system. He is pushing for the government to drop, among other things, a security tax of $2.50 a flight leg that was added to tickets in February. In addition, the airlines have told the government that they will not pay $750 million that federal officials had requested of them for next year's security budget. The industry actually came up with that figure last winter when Congress asked it for an estimate of certain security costs, but the airlines have since said they will pay only $300 million. The companies have also banded together to support the idea of a "trusted traveler" card. Adm. James M. Loy, head of the federal security agency, said yesterday at a Senate hearing that he backed the concept. But such a program should be put in place slowly, some security experts say, and it could be costly for the taxpayer. Moreover, any watering down of current procedures - including removing random checks - could have dire consequences. "I think the industry is being shortsighted if in fact that is their view," said Jeff Schlanger, chief operating officer of security services at Kroll Associates, an international risk assessment company. "A decrease of security in airports during preboarding might inevitably lead to additional situations." Many experts agree that security is better now than a year ago but still has a long way to go before being truly effective. Mr. Schlanger recommended that guards be taught how to ask more probing questions of passengers and to watch for suspicious behavior. George Novak, an airline safety consultant and program director at the Aviation Institute at George Washington University, said bag searches at the gate should be kept for now because there is a chance a bag could be switched or tampered with after the security checkpoint. But truly efficient measures will come only as technology slowly improves, allowing the government to use facial recognition, iris scans and rapid database searches to check passengers, he said. Throughout the summer, embarrassing incidents revealed that people were still able to smuggle weapons past security guards, sometimes at airports where federal workers had already replaced contractors. On Aug. 25, a woman with a loaded .357-caliber handgun in her carry-on bag walked past private screeners in Atlanta and boarded a plane. The gun was found by guards in Philadelphia, where the woman was trying to catch a connecting flight. Nearly 66 million passengers came through Hartsfield from September 2001 to July, a figure down more than 10 percent from the period the previous year. The airport is set up so almost all fliers go through a single security checkpoint with multiple screening gates. Lines in the weeks after last fall's attacks stretched hundreds of feet, with waits sometimes an hour or more. Following advice from consultants, the airport created a single serpentine line that winds back on itself more than a dozen times, and the number of screening gates at the main checkpoint will be expanded to 20 from 18. Ben DeCosta, general manager of the airport, said waiting times were down to 10 minutes in slack periods, but waits of up to 20 minutes still occur at very busy times. Travelers in Atlanta one recent afternoon had widely varying opinions on the new state of security. "It's appropriate, definitely appropriate," said Joseph Rubano, a sales representative from New Jersey. "I'll take any hassle." Caroline Britt, a retired research librarian from Oklahoma, said: "It seems I always get picked to take my shoes off. It's always the old grandmas." John Kylen, a computer network manager for the Kansas Air National Guard, said, "I'd be better off with a Wal-Mart greeter." The Transportation Security Administration has put in place 13,000 federal passenger screeners at 82 airports and wants to replace the work force at 347 more by Nov. 19. Hartsfield is expected to be under a full federal force this fall. Mr. DeCosta and other airport managers criticize the federal agency's plan to install by the end of the year 1,240 minivan-size bomb detection machines for baggage screening and 5,000 smaller explosive-trace-detection devices, mostly in airport terminals. The installations will be costly in the long run and disrupt passenger flow, they say. At Hartsfield, Mr. DeCosta said he had presented the agency with an alternative plan to put 26 of the larger machines on the lower level and in a parking garage to scan checked bags, rather than in any of the terminals. That would take 18 to 21 months, well past the date Congress specified, Mr. DeCosta said. He and 132 other airport directors sent a letter to the Senate last month asking it to push back the deadline. The airports also want Congress to pay for any construction costs related to security. They are asking, too, that the government lift a rule that prevents unchecked cars from parking within 300 feet of a terminal. Hartsfield has managed to wrangle back two-thirds of the 3,100 parking spaces that were closed last fall, but it has lost $10 million to $12 million in parking revenue because of the rule, Mr. DeCosta said. As for the policy of shutting the entire airport or entire terminals for a security breach, Mr. DeCosta said the federal agency's Hartsfield supervisor had agreed not to take such steps unless airport and airline officials were consulted first. "We are constantly looking at many of our policies," said David Steigman, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration, "and the reason is we're trying to provide the best balance possible between world-class security and world-class customer service." Intensified security has changed travel patterns in a way that has benefited airport concessionaires past the checkpoint but hurt those before it. Scared of being delayed at the checkpoint, passengers are waiting until they get past security to eat or shop. Mr. DeCosta said he might ask the city for rent relief for the beleaguered businesses. "People tend to panic when they see the lines," said Lamont McKinnon, an assistant manager at the Museum Company, a gift shop. The airlines are wrestling with their own steep decline in business. At Delta, revenue from May to July was 15 percent below what it was during the corresponding period of last year, and passenger volume is down 5 percent this year. Delta has deferred $3.7 billion in capital spending, including deliveries of new planes from Boeing. It took voluntary leaves or retirements from about 11,300 workers and is still in the process of laying off 1,400 pilots. Desperate to make money again, many full-service carriers are imposing extra fees and restrictions that many travelers find horrendous and that would have been unthinkable in the period immediately after last year's attacks. Delta is charging $40 or more for checked bags beyond the second one, and $20 for a paper ticket. It announced last Thursday that it would not give credit to travelers with nonrefundable tickets who missed their flights and would charge those passengers an extra $100 to fly standby on most flights. Those rules follow policies recently adopted by Delta's biggest rivals. "The airlines are going down the wrong path," said Kevin P. Mitchell, president of the Business Travel Coalition. "They're taking so much away it's going to hurt them." But whatever happens in the months ahead, the last year has already pounded an attitude of resignation into many travelers. "I laugh at people who are concerned when they get stopped by security," said Jim Price, a vice president for sales at JVC who was waiting for a flight to Phoenix. "Why get upset about what I don't have control over?" http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/11/business/11AIR.html?ex=1032749251&ei=1&en=7230811dcefbcc21 HOW TO ADVERTISE --------------------------------- For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters or other creative advertising opportunities with The New York Times on the Web, please contact onlinesales@nytimes.com or visit our online media kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo For general information about NYTimes.com, write to help@nytimes.com. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company