As Americans began to question the safety of air travel in the aftermath of Tuesday's terrorist attacks, several aviation safety and security experts on Wednesday echoed a grim reality: No new technology or security measures can make flying infallible.
There are many technologies on the market that can bolster flight security, including an increased use of biometric devices, advanced scanning equipment and profiling databases. But it's unclear, experts said, how much safer these systems would make the skies, and they would have done little in preventing the four hijackings that led to Tuesday's carnage.
"It would appear that the people who were involved in these hijackings were determined to do it at the risk of their lives," said Todd Curtis, an aviation risk expert who runs AirSafe.com. "It's very, very difficult to prevent someone who's willing to die with the craft."
The Federal Aviation Administration announced Wednesday that it would allow "a limited reopening of the nation's commercial airspace system in order to allow flights that were diverted yesterday to continue to their original destinations," but that most other flights would stay grounded until additional security measures are put into place.
Those measures include:
- Armed plainclothes security guards, also known as "air marshals," to be placed on all domestic flights.
- No curbside or off-airport check-in. All passengers must go to ticket counters to check in.
- No knives of any material allowed. The hijackers in Tuesday's attacks were armed with small knives and razor blades, according to various press reports quoting passengers on hijacked flights who called their loved ones from the air. Federal rules previously allowed knife blades of up to four inches. Metal knives for food service also will be banned.
- Vehicles near airport terminals to be monitored more closely.
John Hansman, a professor of aeronautics at MIT and the director of the International Center for Air Transportation, said that these were reasonable ideas, but he stressed that Tuesday's attacks shouldn't be seen as a way to justify draconian policies at airports.
"We could increase the pain threshold in going through security," he said, "or you can do more screening, even profiling -- that's identifying 'threat categories,' and people who have met your threat category will be pulled out for additional screening and perhaps pulled off the airplane. But there are significant civil rights implications."
He added, "You know what, I hope (that doesn't happen). There's a tendency for a knee-jerk reaction to fight the last war. We may be increasing the burdens on the traveling public, even though I seriously doubt (more measures) would have much impact."
In addition, Hansman said that flying is by far the safest means of travel, causing far fewer fatalities than automobiles.
But given the severity of the attacks, there's no telling, some people said, whether the traveling public could ever quite take solace in those cozy statistics, and there will almost certainly be a call for increased precautions.
Some companies that make airport safety devices like advanced bomb- and weapon-detecting equipment declined to comment on the record on Wednesday, saying that given the tragedies, it would not be appropriate for them to appear to be selling their wares as a solution.
Michael Meshey, the director of PerkinElmer Detection Systems, for example, said that he was deferring all media calls to the FAA. The FAA declined to comment on security procedures.
But Sunday Lewis, the chief marketing officer of Identix, said that the fingerprint-scanning products made by her company would represent a "significant improvement, a deterrent. Nothing is foolproof, but it's much more of a deterrent than what we have now."
Currently, Identix's fingerprint-scanning technology is being used in eight U.S. airports to determine whether people who apply for security jobs are listed in the FBI's Automated Fingerprint Identification System, a database of known criminals and terrorists.
Ironically, two of the airports are Boston's Logan International and Washington's Dulles, which is where three of the terrorist planes originated on Tuesday.
Lewis said that the current system is only the tip of what may be done with biometrics at airports. Her company envisions a large, "closed-loop" system in which passengers check in using their fingerprints and are "tied" to their luggage and other possessions with that ID.
Such a system may also connect with FBI databases, she said, but if there are civil rights and privacy concerns, that aspect of the system would not have to be used.
Lewis stressed that this system was easy to set up and has been feasible for the last six years. She said there's already interest in the system.
"We have offices in D.C. so we are getting a lot of calls," she said.
Reuters contributed to this story.
