Travel Articles

Here's a few things we saw that you should read about travel...

Check out this YouTube Global Air Traffic Symphony (Really worth a look see!)

GPS Updated Air Traffic Control System Could Save Billions (AP, 9 Oct 2008)
A la Carte Airline Pricing--start bringing tokens for the restroom! (ABC News, 5 Oct 2008)
Expanded Border Searches for Travelers (Probable Cause?!) (Washington Post, 23 Sept 2008)
FAA Rushed Plane's Approval (NYTimes, 17 Sept 2008)
No-Fly Watchlist: How BIG is it? (NYTimes, 2 Sept 2008)
Flight Delays Cost US Economy $40 Billion (LATimes, 22 May 2008)
Fairness and Equal in Security Lines: Or are The Rich Getting Fast-Tracked?(NYTimes, 11 May 2008)
Outsourcing Aircraft Maintenance and Repairs: Is that safe? (USA Today, 15 Oct 2007)
Air Travel Safer than Ever (NYTimes, 1 Oct 2007)
U.S. Watching Travelers' Habits, Keeping Records...(Washington Post, 22 Sept 2007)
The Real Security Hole! (NYTimes, 16 March 2007)
Passenger Bill of Rights (in Europe, not here!) (BBC, 17 Sept 2005)
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GPS could save airlines time and fuel
By MICHAEL TARM, Associated Press - 9 October 2008

A World War II-era air traffic network that often forces planes to take longer, zigzagging routes is costing U.S. airlines billions of dollars in wasted fuel while an upgrade to a satellite-based system has languished in the planning stages for more than a decade.

The $35 billion plan would replace the current radar system with the kind of GPS technology that has become commonplace in cars and cell phones. Supporters say it would triple air traffic capacity, reduce delays by at least half, improve safety and curb greenhouse gas emissions.

An Associated Press analysis of federal and industry data found that if the new system were already in place, airlines could have saved more than $5 billion in fuel this year alone.

But funding delays and the complexities of the switchover have kept the project grounded. The government does not expect to have it up and running until the early 2020s, and without a major commitment, supporters warn that even that goal might be not be attainable.

"The United States has been to the moon and back. I think the public deserves that same level of effort for our national airspace system," Robert Sturgell, the acting administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, said in a recent interview.

The planned satellite-driven network, dubbed NextGen, would save fuel by ditching radar technology that is more than 50 years old and enabling GPS-equipped planes to fly the shortest route between two points: a straight line.

NextGen could save airlines at least 3.3 billion gallons of fuel a year — or more than $10 billion annually by 2025, based on today's fuel prices, according to FAA projections obtained by The Associated Press.

Currently, jetliners move in single-file lines along narrow highways in the sky marked by radio beacons. Many of the routes gently zigzag from one beacon to the next, sometimes forcing cross-country flights to follow sweeping arcs and waste hundreds of gallons of fuel.

It's "the equivalent of using an electric typewriter when others are using computers," said David Castelveter, a spokesman for the Air Transportation Association. "It's a huge, huge drag on productivity."

Some private and commercial aircraft already are equipped with GPS devices that pilots use to determine their position, but the NextGen system would dramatically expand use of the technology by creating a nationwide GPS network for air traffic.

Building the network involves gradually putting together the new system while still relying on radar for day-to-day operations.

Gerald Dillingham, director of civil aviation issues at the U.S. Government Accountability Office, likened the process "to changing a tire on a car that's going 60 miles an hour."

Hank Krakowski, the FAA's head of the air traffic system, called it "one of the largest project management challenges the federal government has had since we put somebody on the moon."

Airports also have to make improvements to accommodate the expected increase in air traffic.

U.S. airlines have struggled in recent years, in part because of rising fuel prices. Ten airlines have shut down and others are facing bankruptcy. Their financial troubles mean less-frequent flights and fewer amenities for air travelers, who must pay more for tickets, luggage, drinks — even pillows.

A report on NextGen released last month by the Government Accountability Office said major problems remained, including a lack of detail about just how the system would work and a shortage of the kind of highly skilled managers needed to see the project through.

Critics have said the Bush administration, while expressing support for a satellite-based system, never pushed hard enough for it.

"The next president needs to make the NextGen initiative a national priority and ensure that it is given the resources, management attention and sense of urgency that it warrants," said Rep. Bart Gordon, a Democrat from Tennessee and chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee.

Airlines are expected to contribute $15 billion toward the $35 billion project, and they must equip their fleets with GPS at a cost of more than $200,000 per plane.

But most carriers — which are otherwise enthusiastic about NextGen — are reluctant to retrofit planes years, maybe decades, before the satellite network is fully operational.

"It's like you buying a new car and the dealer saying, 'How would you like to buy this nifty GPS technology — but it won't be available in your area for years,'" Castelveter said.

The NextGen system could offer airlines a 10 percent savings in fuel costs per year. If the network were in place today, it would essentially pay for itself in just seven years.

GPS is already used in many parts of the aviation world. Many European countries, China and even Mongolia have established some GPS networks or plan to do so soon.

At least one major U.S. carrier, Southwest Airlines, says it's investing $175 million to equip 500 planes with GPS within a few years. That will allow pilots to fly more efficiently even before the full NextGen system is in place, including quicker landings that burn less fuel.

Getting each of its planes on the ground just one minute faster, Southwest says, would save $25 million in fuel a year.

The airline could wait until the new system is up and running, "but we're pouring gas down the drain," said Dan Gerrity, CEO of Naverus Inc., which is helping Southwest implement its GPS plans.

Cargo carrier UPS has also installed GPS gear on hundreds of aircraft for use at its Louisville, Ky., hub, saying the technology will save nearly a million gallons of fuel a year, as well as reduce noise and emissions by around 30 percent.

NextGen would also help airliners fly, land and takeoff closer together, minimizing delays. Even though the technology would allow more planes into the sky, the FAA and pilots agree that the technology would actually reduce the risk of accidents such as midair collisions and runway incursions.

NextGen would for the first time let flight crews view precisely where other aircraft are using a cockpit monitor. The current radar system takes more than 10 seconds to scan an area, so controllers keep aircraft separated by several miles as a precaution.

Most pilots see NextGen as the best hope for keeping flights on time. Rory Kay of the Air Line Pilots Association said the improved technology could also help relieve pilot fatigue by cutting the time planes wait on the ground.

Passenger groups generally support the project, even though they expect airlines to pass some costs onto customers.

"But we think it'll all be worth it in the long run," said David Stempler, president of the Air Travelers Association. "The alternatives look pretty bleak to us."

To the FAA's consternation, Congress has failed to pass a bill giving the agency permission to dip into the nation's aviation trust fund to spend nearly $6 billion on NextGen over the next five years.

Robert Poole, an aviation expert with the free market-oriented Reason Foundation, said some legislators are reluctant to vote for a satellite system that would make eliminate hundreds of jobs at radar stations in their districts.

Meanwhile, the air traffic controllers union, which is often at odds with FAA brass over labor issues, accuses the agency of seeing the whiz-bang satellite technology as a cure-all for aviation problems.

It says some of the millions of dollars earmarked for NextGen would be better spent maintaining the current system, citing an FAA computer glitch in August that delayed 650 flights at airports from Orlando to Chicago.

It's become fashionable, he added, to blame the radar system for aviation ills while ignoring other factors — such as overbooked flights and a lack of suitable airports and runways.

"GPS might be great to put in your car, too, but it's not going to get you to work any faster unless they open up another lane on the highway. And it's the same in the air," said Doug Church of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.

Poole said the FAA has a track record of proposing dazzling-sounding projects, then failing to deliver.

He cites an FAA initiative called STARS, which was launched a decade ago to give controllers advanced, multicolored radar screens. The project missed deadlines, went hundreds of millions of dollars over budget and had to be scaled down.

Poole doesn't doubt NextGen's potential, but he's pessimistic about the prospects for rapid progress.

"I just think it's very unlikely to be done in anything like the time frame and the budget now projected," he said. "And that will be a tragedy for aviation."

Facing Opposition to Fees, American Airlines Considers A La Carte Pricing For Services
By DAVID KOENIG - The Associated Press - ABCNews (5 Oct 2008)

The idea of paying a single, simple fare to fly on an airliner is becoming as quaint as stewardesses in short skirts.

American Airlines is about to accelerate the trend of breaking the cost of a trip into an airfare plus many smaller fees.

Starting next year, American, which led a stampede by U.S. carriers to charge customers for checking even a single suitcase, plans to imitate the a la carte pricing structure pioneered by Air Canada, airline officials say. There are likely to be a few basic fare plans, and travelers can pick additional services — for a fee.

Fans of "unbundling," as it's called, say it gives travelers lower base fares with the option of paying for extras that they really want, from beverages to blankets.

Some travelers are wary, however, and suspect the airlines are just trying to chisel them a few bucks at a time.

Phone and cable companies have been using this pricing approach for years to offer extras like premium channels and pay-per-view events. Now airlines see unbundling as a way to boost revenue and defray sky-high prices for jet fuel. In recent months they have added and enlarged charges for fuel, checked baggage, changing flights, upgrading from coach and other services.

There may be no going back to all-inclusive fares, even with the recent decline in fuel prices.

"We as an industry have opted to not just raise (ticket) prices but to raise prices and change the fee structure," said Daniel Garton, American Airlines' executive vice president of marketing. Without fees to offset rising costs, "you're not going to be talking about fees — you're going to be talking about lost service ... being able to have a flight to San Diego," he said.

UAL Corp.'s United Airlines expects to raise $700 million a year from fees. Northwest Airlines Corp. estimates baggage charges will bring in $150 million to $200 million a year. Continental Airlines Inc. predicts it will generate more than $100 million just from a new $15 fee for checking a single bag — that doesn't include levies on additional bags.

Airlines have grown more sophisticated at wringing every last dollar out of a flight, partly by lowering and raising fares based on supply and demand. Much of this magic, called "yield management," is invisible to passengers, but it results in people in the same cabin paying wildly different amounts for the same flight.

Executives at Air Canada, which revamped its fare structure and began unbundling five years ago, look down their noses a bit at the actions of their U.S. counterparts, saying a la carte pricing should be about transparency and customer choice, not simply revenue.

Air Canada went through bankruptcy earlier this decade, and when it emerged in 2004 it was losing customers to low-cost rival WestJet Airlines Ltd. Air Canada fought back by creating a bare-bones service to compete with WestJet fares, with extra amenities for picking a fancier plan.

"We did this in the environment of Air Canada losing market share," said Ben Smith, executive vice president at Air Canada. "It was about gaining the confidence back from our customers and offering products we thought they wanted."

On Air Canada's Web site, travelers pick from four fare levels. The top tickets, called Latitude and Executive Class, are fully refundable and come with priority check-in, food and other goodies included.

The cheapest fare, called Tango, requires extra fees for upgrades such as a food voucher, advance seat selection, flight changes and airport lounge access. Tango passengers can save another $3 by declining frequent-flier miles or not checking a bag.

"Consumers don't understand airline pricing, and they certainly don't understand yield management," said Peter Belobaba, an expert on airline pricing at MIT. "Air Canada is saying, 'We're practicing all those pricing strategies, but at least we're laying it out for you.'"

Smith said simplified fares have helped Air Canada stabilize its domestic market share — which it needs to feed its profitable international routes — and increase revenue. Half of Air Canada's passengers pick an option higher than the basic Tango plan, he said.

Air Canada passengers give the airline credit for making fares understandable — "It's nice to know where I could save money," said Amanda Kruzich, a cosmetics company marketing rep who recently flew on Air Canada from Toronto to Dallas.

Still, Kruzich said she would rather have an all-inclusive fare.

"I feel nickel-and-dimed when I have to pay extra for everything," she said. "Just throw it all in and tell me what the fare is."

Matt Kokidko, who works for a car-rental company in Orlando, Fla., and recently flew to Dallas on American, agreed.

"We're not saving enough on the fares to justify that," Kokidko said of the extra fees charged by American. He had not flown in a while and was stunned that American charged for use of a headset.

Scott Cowley of Dallas, a frequent flier in his job as sales representative for an aerospace parts manufacturer, said he does not want to take time to go through a menu of optional, for-a-fee services.

"It's hard enough to find the flight I want at the time I want," he said.

But experts say travelers should expect fees to become permanent.

George Hobica, founder of airfarewatchdog.com, a discount-travel Web site, expects airlines to start charging extra for carry-on bags, booking a flight online, and picking a seat assignment.

"The fees are here to stay, and there will be more of them," he said. "Honestly, I think it's better for consumers. If I pack light, why should I pay for the guy who packs heavy?"

According to a recent survey of airline executives by consultant IdeaWorks, fees that will spread the fastest will be for Internet, e-mail and mobile phone service during flights and for special seating, such as in exit rows.
Southwest Airlines Co. avoids most of the fees charged by rivals, and brags about that in television ads. Senior vice president of marketing Dave Ridley said the money other carriers make from fees might be offset by passengers booking their next flight on Southwest.

But Southwest will soon survey consumers about charges, and Ridley wouldn't rule out fees in the future.

There are still a few technology speed bumps in the way of true a la carte pricing.

Airlines still sell a large chunk of their tickets through global distribution systems, or GDSs, which were built to display simpler fare structures to travel agents and "have been very slow" to change how they display fares, said Smith of Air Canada.

The largest GDS, Sabre, says it has solved those problems.

Where will airlines draw the line on new fees?

Hobica thinks charging passengers by weight makes perfect sense because they cause the plane to burn more fuel. But he admits a poundage penalty might be hard to sell, and so would charging for oxygen masks.

"I can't see them announcing, 'Put in another quarter for the next three minutes,'" he said.

Expanded Powers to Search Travelers at Border Detailed
By Ellen Nakashima Washington Post - September 23, 2008

The U.S. government has quietly recast policies that affect the way information is gathered from U.S. citizens and others crossing the border and what is done with it, including relaxing a two-decade-old policy that placed a high bar on federal agents copying travelers' personal material, according to newly released documents.

The policy changes, civil liberties advocates say, also raise concerns about the guidelines under which border officers may share data copied from laptop computers and cellphones with other agencies and the types of questions they are allowed to ask American citizens.

In July, the Department of Homeland Security disclosed policies that showed that federal agents may copy books, documents, and the data on laptops and other electronic devices without suspecting a traveler of wrongdoing. But what DHS did not disclose was that since 1986 and until last year, the government generally required a higher standard: Federal agents needed probable cause that a law was being broken before they could copy material a traveler was bringing into the country.

The changes are part of a broader trend across the government to harness technology in the fight against terrorism. But they are taking place largely without public input or review, critics said, raising concerns that federal border agents are acting without proper guidelines or oversight and that policies are being adopted that do not adequately protect travelers' civil liberties when they are being questioned or their belongings searched.

"For 20 years the government has at least implicitly recognized there were some First Amendment restrictions on reading and copying documents," said Shirin Sinnar, a staff attorney with the Asian Law Caucus, which along with the Electronic Frontier Foundation sued the government under the Freedom of Information Act for disclosure of border search policies. "It's disturbing now that the government has jettisoned that policy in favor of one that violates First Amendment rights."

DHS spokeswoman Amy Kudwa said the updating of policies reflects an effort to be more transparent. In an e-mail, she wrote that the decision of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) "to change some of the standards in its old policies reflects the realities of the post-9/11 environment, the agency's expanded mission and legal authorities, and developments in the law, including the Homeland Security Act of 2003. Although certain aspects of the policies have changed, the policies have always reflected the notion that officers have the constitutional authority to inspect information presented at the border" without requiring suspicion of a particular traveler.

The 1986 policy was issued after a lawsuit was filed by a group of activists returning from Nicaragua who had their diaries, datebooks and other personal papers seized and photocopied by customs officers and shared with the FBI. The government argued that the customs agency had the right to enforce a law against importing subversive literature.

"Essentially they were using that as a pretext to do intelligence gathering on critics of our policies on Nicaragua," said David D. Cole, a Georgetown University law professor who was then a lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights, representing the activists suing the government in Heidy v. U.S. Customs Service.

To set guidelines on document searches, the agency issued the 1986 directive that made clear that its officers "as a general rule . . . should not read personal correspondence." But, the policy noted, officers had the authority to scan material for evidence of violation of laws pertaining to copyright, sedition and contraband. With reasonable suspicion of a violation, they could detain the material. With probable cause of a violation, they could seize and copy it.

In July 2007, the government dropped the requirement that there be reasonable suspicion to review material but specified that the review had to take place in connection with laws enforced by CBP, according to a copy of a policy the groups obtained.

Then, this July, the government issued its broadest policy to date regarding information searches at the border, allowing documents and electronic devices to be detained for an unspecified period. Moreover, they may now be copied without any suspicion of wrongdoing, the lowest legal standard.

"The tragic events of 9/11 required the federal government to reexamine its law enforcement and counterterrorism efforts to ensure that all legally available means are employed to prevent another attack," Kudwa said.

But Marcia Hofmann, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that laptop computers may contain "a massive amount of private information such as personal e-mails, financial data or confidential business records" and that the government should not violate travelers' constitutional rights in the name of national security.

There is apparently wide interest among other government agencies in CBP's ability to collect information, according to a July 11, 2007, e-mail obtained by the groups. The e-mail originated from the agency's New York field office. "As we all know, CBP's data collection capabilities have been widely discussed in the law enforcement community and we have been asked by many various agencies to copy and transmit documentation being carried by travelers for legitimate law enforcement reasons," said the writer, whose name was redacted.

The Heidy decision barred customs officers from sharing information they suspected was seditious with other federal agencies unless the agencies abided by CBP's restrictions on data retention. But the July policy allows the agency to share data obtained at the border if there is suspicion that a law enforced by it is being violated.

Cole said the government's search authority at the border is very broad, "so it is important that it not be turned into a loophole by which other law enforcement agencies, which are not permitted to conduct searches without probable cause or reasonable suspicion, are able to avoid the constitutional limits on their authority."

Customs officers are trained to know under what circumstances sensitive law enforcement information may be shared and with whom, DHS spokesman Russ Knocke said.

Over the past several years, the Asian Law Caucus and other civil liberties groups have reported a surge in complaints from travelers who have been questioned about their religious practices and political leanings. Many of the travelers say they have had their laptops or phones searched.

Yasir Qadhi, a 33-year-old Houston native who studied in Saudi Arabia from 1995 to 2005 and is pursuing a doctorate in Islamic studies at Yale University, said he is questioned every time he reenters the United States. He said he is routinely asked which mosques he has prayed in, what charities he donates to, what lectures he has delivered, what the lectures are titled. If he has notes, he said, they are photocopied.

In March 2006, when driving home to New Haven, Conn., from Toronto, he said, he was detained with his wife and three children at the border for 5 1/2 hours. The agents, he said, asked about religion, and, noting his Saudi studies, asked him for classmates' names and whom he corresponded with in the United States.

They also detained his cellphone.

Then, this spring, an agent in the FBI's New Haven field office asked him to come by. Qadhi said the agent cited the March 2006 stop and said, "We went through your personal diary in your phone, and we discovered these numbers on there, and we want to know your relationship with these specific individuals."

Qadhi said: "And they went through each one of them."

Knocke said he could not comment on an individual case. He said customs officers do not racially profile in any way but have the authority to "take and consider evidence concerning the privilege" of any person to enter the United States.

Nathan A. Sales, former DHS deputy assistant secretary for policy development, said that "in some instances, you can imagine it would be appropriate to ask questions" such as those asked of Qadhi. "But when you do, you're playing with fire."

Sales, a George Mason University law professor, said: "If you want to ask questions about a person's churchgoing or charitable contributions, you need to take steps to ensure it doesn't stray from legitimate questions to harassment. You need to have a clearly established policy that these sorts of questions are only asked in certain circumstances, and only when we have some indication to believe that a particular mosque or a particular charity might have some sort of terrorist tie."

Qadhi said he feels "frustrated" by a system that he thinks will never tell him what list he is on so that he can get off it. "I'm treated like a second-class citizen, and there's absolutely nothing I can do," he said. "This is simply not the America I grew up in."

F.A.A. Is Said to Have Rushed Plane’s Approval
September 17, 2008 - NYTimes
By MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON — A House subcommittee is expected to hear accusations on Wednesday that supervisors at the Federal Aviation Administration pressured subordinates to approve a new model of airplane prematurely, and transferred employees who raised safety concerns that might have delayed the approval.

According to a summary prepared by the staff of the aviation subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure committee, the F.A.A. “appeared to be lenient with the manufacturer” and accepted “i.o.u.’s” on systems that did not meet regulations.

The accusations echo the dispute earlier this year about how the F.A.A. handled safety problems at Southwest Airlines. In that case, F.A.A. supervisors improperly overruled rank-and-file inspectors and allowed the airline to keep flying planes on which inspections had been skipped.

But the F.A.A., whose work was criticized by the subcommittee in the Southwest case, asserts that while the procedure could be improved, the plane is safe and no one was improperly pressured.

Last week, the F.A.A. released a summary of a special review it had ordered of the approval of the new plane, the Eclipse 500. The plane is among the first of a new type of plane called a very light jet. The Eclipse is a five- or six-seat twin-engine jet, certified for operation by a single pilot, and now in service as an air taxi and corporate jet.

The agency said that certification was appropriate, but that in some cases its employees did not follow procedures.

“While we made the right call in certifying this aircraft, the process we used could and should have been better coordinated,” said Robert A. Sturgell, the acting administrator of the agency. The F.A.A. headquarters reassigned some experts assigned to the project because, it said, they were not following proper procedures.

The inspector general of the Transportation Department is also studying the certification, but has not released any findings.

According to the committee staff’s report on the Eclipse, the computer displays in the cockpit have sometimes gone blank; the system that warns that the plane is flying too slowly or at a dangerous pitch has sometimes sounded false alarms; and the wing flaps, which are deployed to help the plane maneuver at low speeds, have sometimes failed to work. Before top F.A.A. officials insisted that the plane be certified, agency experts had identified concerns about systems related to all these problems, according to committee investigators.

The chief executive of Eclipse Aviation at the time the plane was certified, Vern Raburn, said his company had clashed with the F.A.A. staff because the technology was “pushing the envelope” for small planes, and the F.A.A. staff members in charge of such planes had little experience with advanced electronics or new assembly techniques.

Sometimes, Mr. Raburn said, the F.A.A. staff members handling the certification would tell him, “I don’t like it because I don’t understand it.”

Mr. Raburn clashed directly with some F.A.A. personnel, according to some officials, but Mr. Raburn said his dealings with the agency were always civil. Mr. Raburn lost his job over the summer when his company failed to meet financial goals.

Other accusations include that the F.A.A. official in charge of certification, John Hickey, replaced agency personnel who thought the plane was not ready. F.A.A. officials acknowledged that some employees were transferred but said that they were not applying the agency’s rules properly. The committee staff members, however, say the transfers may be an example of the agency being too cozy with the companies it regulates.

Diane Spitaliere, a spokeswoman for the agency, said that companies that fly the Eclipse have made an abnormally high number of reports to the F.A.A. of operating problems compared with other small private planes. But the comparison could be misleading, because the Eclipse, which is used as an air taxi or charter, is often flown under rules for commercial planes that have stricter reporting requirements. “This is a new type of operation, and it’s hard to get an apples-to-apples comparison,” Ms. Spitaliere said. The number of problem reports is typical for a new airliner, she said.

Eclipse itself has run into trouble beyond the scrutiny of the plane’s certification. The aircraft was supposed to sell for about $1 million, but now lists at $2.15 million.

Peg Billson, president and general manager of the company’s aviation division, said that the company had cut its production rate, which had been as high as six a week, to assess how to do things more economically. About 250 planes have been delivered.

The F.A.A. still predicts that thousands of very light jets will enter service in the next few years. The idea is that planes like the Eclipse, which can land or take off on a 2,200-foot runway, will be able to use hundreds of small airports that have no commercial service today. Because the Eclipse can fly at 41,000 feet, above the mountains and most weather, and cruise at 430 m.p.h., far faster than a propeller-driven plane, it could help create a whole new market for air travel, some experts say.

The Terrorist Watch List, Jumbled in Translation
On the Road - September 2, 2008 - NY Times
By JOE SHARKEY

NOBODY likes the way the terrorist watch lists work. Not the federal government, not the airlines, and certainly not the innocent travelers who are flagged and delayed at the airport when an airline finds a match of their name on the federal master list.
There's even dispute about how many names are on the list. A million (!) says the American Civil Liberties Union. Not even close (!), responds the Transportation Security Administration.
The federal Terrorist Screening Center database contained more than 724,000 "records" as of April 2007, according to an audit by the inspector general's office of the Justice Department, which said the number of records was growing by 20,000 a month.
The American Civil Liberties Union, after extrapolating, issued a report in July saying that the "nation's terrorist watch list has hit one million names."
It added that "members of Congress, nuns, war heroes and other 'suspicious characters' with names like Robert Johnson and Gary Smith have become trapped in the Kafkaesque clutches of this list."
Whoa, says Kip Hawley, the director of the Transportation Security Administration. "The list has no more than 50,000 names," Mr. Hawley said in a recent interview.
As he begins to wrap up his three-year tenure at the T.S.A., Mr. Hawley says he is perplexed by the commotion over the watch list.
The Terrorist Screening Center maintains the list to flag names of people in two categories: those with known terrorist ties who are on the "no fly" portion of the list, and those with names that for various reasons are on a broader "selectee" list.
The selectee list is responsible for much of the ridicule directed at the T.S.A. That list contains many common names - like Michael Kirby, who was featured in last week's column.
Like Mr. Kirby, many people who share names or variants of names on the selectee list can't print a boarding pass in advance. Every time they want to fly, they must report to the airline ticket desk to be cleared before they board.
The Justice Department found that the Terrorist Screening Center "has not done enough to ensure that the database was complete and accurate."
The confusion is compounded because the airlines, not the government, are usually the point-of-contact arbiter of who actually is flagged at the airport.
Airlines compile their lists using names on the federal list, Mr. Hawley said. But depending on how the airline puts together its list, passengers with the same or even vaguely similar names as ones on the federal list can turn up as "false positives," Mr. Hawley said.
"Depending on how the airline filters it, you may end up with hundreds of people being told they're on the selectee list," Mr. Hawley said.
The airlines, he said, "decided that rather than investing in technology to work this out, we'll have you go over to a ticket agent because it's no skin off our nose if you stand in line. At that point, they look up the government list, which has more detailed data, and they will see that the real person on the watch list is 60 years old and you're 25 years old, and they say O.K., you're obviously not the person. But all those people go away mad, thinking 'What's the T.S.A. got against me?' "
The airlines dislike the cumbersome task of matching their passenger lists, which don't contain personal data like birth dates, against the federal list, which does. The airline industry strongly supports a federal initiative called Secure Flight, which would require the T.S.A. itself to check names against passenger lists supplied by airlines in advance of every flight.
In a statement, the Air Transport Association said, "The airlines have been given assurances for more than four years that T.S.A. would soon be taking over responsibility for vetting passenger names against government watch lists. With recurrent T.S.A. delays in meeting that commitment, airlines invested millions of dollars in programming costs to minimize the number of misidentified passengers."
Secure Flight, which Mr. Hawley says he supports, is expected to be in place next year. It has been stalled while the Homeland Security Department addresses concerns raised in Congress about privacy.


Flight delays cost economy more than $40 billion a year
May 22, 2008, LATimes

WASHINGTON -- Flight delays are enough of a headache. Now Congress is saying that getting stuck in airports and on runways is a "$41 billion punch in the gut."

The congressional Joint Economic Committee, in a report released today, found that the total cost of domestic air traffic delays to the American economy in 2007 was almost $41 billion.
That included $19 billion in extra operating costs for the airlines, $12 billion in costs to passengers from reduced productivity and lost business and leisure opportunities and almost $10 billion in indirect costs, particularly to food and lodging industries that rely on air traffic.
"Passengers, airlines and our economy felt a $41 billion punch in the gut from flight delays," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., chairman of the committee. "With the summer travel season being kicked off with Memorial Day, delays and the costs of those delays will only go up."
Missed connections, disrupted ground travel plans, lost pre-paid hotel reservations and missed meetings were among the factors considered for passenger costs.
Schumer, presenting the report along with committee Vice Chair Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., said the cost estimate was conservative because it did not include flights canceled entirely and applied only to domestic flights.
Delays, he said, "aren't just an annoyance, they are a serious blow to our economy."
The costs to the airlines included $1.6 billion to pay for extra jet fuel. The report said there were 740 million additional gallons of jet fuel used, and calculated the cost assuming an average wholesale price of $2.15 a gallon last year.
It said that burning fuel during delays released an additional 7.1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
The committee examined more than 10 million individual flight records from the Department of Transportation. It used DOT guidelines in setting a value of $37.60 per passenger per delay hour.
Those delays reached 320 million hours last year, about 20% of domestic flight time. Schumer said the committee found that only 6% of delays were caused by weather or security-related issues. The overwhelming causes were systemic congestion problems that will only get worse as air passengers increase from about 700 million a year today to an estimated 1.1 billion in 2025.

TSA chief Kip Hawley faced questions Tuesday on the agency's failure to write security regulations for repair shops as Congress ordered nearly four years ago. Hawley is testifying Tuesday before House and Senate panels looking broadly at aviation security.
DEBATE: Risk posed by overseas aircraft repairs
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., sharply criticized Hawley for missing an August 2004 deadline to issue security regulations for nearly 700 overseas repair stations that work on airplanes for U.S. airlines. "I can't figure out why there is no sense of urgency on foreign repair stations," McCaskill told Hawley.
She referrred to a "scathing" report written in 2003 by the Department of Transportation's inspector general outlining security concerns about the repair shops. "It is a disaster waiting to happen," McCaskill said of the possibility of a terrorist getting into an overseas repair shop to sabotage an airplane.
McCaskill said her staff recently received a copy of security rules for overseas repair shops that TSA officials had drafted in 2005 but never published. The draft was issued under David Stone, who resigned as TSA chief in June 2005. Hawley took over in July 2005.
Hawley vowed to meet a new deadline that Congress set in August requiring the TSA to issue the security rules by August 2008 and inspect all foreign repair shops by February 2009.
"The regulation is now working its way through the process," Hawley said.
Airlines send planes to shops overseas and in the USA for work ranging from cleaning seats and changing tires to overhauling engines. Some repair shops are inside airport boundaries and well-secured but others are in industrial areas with less security. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) certifies most shops, which operate independently of airlines.
Some repair facilities are operated by large manufacturers such as Pratt & Whitney and Boeing. Others are small businesses, incountries such as China, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan.
TSA spokesman Christopher White said, "We don't consider foreign repair stations a serious concern for passengers." Airplanesreturning from shops are inspected by airlines, and crews check the planes before, during and after each flight.
As airlines increasingly rely on shops and close their own repair facilities, lawmakers are concerned that repairs are not
monitored by federal regulators. The FAA licenses 4,227 repair shops in the USA and 694 overseas to work on planes operated by U.S. carriers.
Congress ordered the TSA in late 2003 to write security rules for the shops by August 2004. The agency was to inspect the overseas shops by February 2006 and order problems corrected.
But the TSA has not issued regulations, drawing rebuke from lawmakers. "This is a problem and we need a plan to deal with it," said Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore. "We don't know who the people are working at these repair stations."
White said the TSA has focused more on preventing terrorists from carrying bombs on board airplanes.
Congress intensified pressure on the TSA in August when it said no new overseas repair shops could be licensed to work on U.S. planes if the inspections are not completed by February 2009.
Barring new overseas shops would make it harder and costlier for airlines to get repairs done, said Michael Romanowski, a vice president at the Aerospace Industries Association.


Fatal Airplane Crashes Drop 65%
By MATTHEW L. WALD - October 1, 2007, NYTimes
WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 - After two infamous crashes in 1996 that together killed 375 people, a White House commission told the airline industry and its regulators to reduce the domestic rate of fatal accidents 80 percent over 10 years. That clock ended Sunday.
They have come close to reaching that goal. Barring a crash before midnight Sunday, the drop in the accident rate will be about 65 percent, to one fatal accident in about 4.5 million departures, from one in nearly 2 million in 1997.
There have been no fatal airliner crashes involving scheduled flights this year in the United States and just one fatal accident: a mechanic who was trying to close the cabin door of a chartered Boeing 737 on the ground in Tunica, Miss., fell to the pavement during a rainstorm.
Around the world, airliners continue to crash. There have been 7 crashes this year that killed more than 20 people each.
Even so, there has been strong progress internationally. William R. Voss, president of the Flight Safety Foundation, recently calculated that if the 1996 accident rate had remained the same in 2006, there would have been 30 major accidents last year. Instead, there were 11.
"This is the golden age of safety, the safest period, in the safest mode, in the history of the world," said Marion C. Blakey, the administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, in a speech to an aviation group in Washington on Sept. 11, two days before her five-year term ended.
Some of the improvement may be luck, as there is an element of randomness to crashes. But part of the explanation certainly lies in the payoff from sustained efforts by American and many foreign airlines to identify and eliminate small problems that are common precursors to accidents.
Airlines around the world, even in less-developed nations, have also benefited from equipment improvements, like cockpit instruments that help planes steer clear of mountains when visibility is poor, and jet engines that are so reliable that pilots can go through their entire careers without seeing one fail.
Aviation safety experts have uncovered subtle problems. One oft-cited example is a discovery in the last decade by US Airways (then US Air) that many of its planes approaching Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina were coming in "high and hot," too fast and at a steep angle.
As a result, airplanes were conducting "unstabilized approaches," meaning pilots had to fiddle with flaps, throttle and other controls just before landing.
The US Airways discovery at Charlotte was something new because the airline did not demostrate it after a crash or from pilot reports.
The airline instead tapped into the system that feeds information to one of the "black boxes," the flight data recorder, and siphoned off a stream of data that went to a removable recording device. Then it analyzed flights by the hundreds and looked for unusual patterns, a technique now common with airlines.
Convinced, the F.A.A. changed the approach procedure there, and the airport installed a system to guide planes at a proper angle.
Nearly all unstabilized approaches end with a safe landing, but a study by Mr. Voss's organization found that such approaches were a factor in two-thirds of 76 accidents and serious incidents worldwide during landing attempts from 1984 to 1997. So one focus of the last 10 years has been to look for air traffic procedures that could cause problems.
The Air Line Pilots Association cited another problem that is now being resolved. The airlines pooled their data - an action that was itself an innovation - on operations at Reno, Nev., and found that the cockpit system that warns of imminent flight into a mountain often sounded a false alarm.
Aviation experts say that if safety alarms sound falsely too often, they become like the homeowner's smoke alarm that is set off by an egg frying in the kitchen - people start ignoring it. As at Charlotte with the "high and hot" approaches, this was a known glitch in the system that had not caused any crashes, but that might someday contribute to one.
The solution in Reno, which is still being developed, is better guidance for pilots to follow flight paths precisely and stay farther away from mountains in the area.
In other places, improvements have been as simple as better signs on taxiways to prevent planes from moving into the path of other aircraft.
"It's not one thing. It's a series of small things," said John Cox, who was an Air Line Pilots Association safety representative for 20 years. Many of those small things were minor problems observed in everyday operations, he said, then counted, scrutinized and eliminated before they caused an accident.
Newer planes are also safer. All American airliners, for example, now have "enhanced ground proximity warning systems." These systems use the Global Positioning System to compare the plane's position against a database of mountains and buildings, and warn of impending collision.
Analyzing data from safe flights is a reversal of the historic practice, which is to go out and "kick the tin" after a plane crash, looking for clues. Analyzing safe flights is almost all that is left, experts say, as the accident rate falls and there is less tin to kick.
"The sample is so small, you won't have effective data sampling," said Hank Krakowski, a United Airlines executive who served as co-chairman of the Commercial Aviation Safety Team. That team is an outgrowth of the White House commission, and it comprises airlines, aircraft builders and pilot unions. (In October, Mr. Krakowski is to become the F.A.A.'s chief operating officer.)
Some unions have complained about trends like maintenance outsourcing, in which an airline pays another airline or an outside shop to do crucial safety work, and some government auditors have echoed the concern.
But there have been no fatal crashes in which maintenance error was a cause since January 2003, when a US Airways Express flight, a Beechcraft 1900, went out of control on takeoff because of an improperly rigged tail. Statistically, the era of outsourcing appears to be safer than when airlines did most of the work themselves, although that does not suggest a cause-and-effect relationship.
The decade-long push to reduce the accident rate began with a "safety summit" in 1996, after the T.W.A. Flight 800 disaster off Long Island and the ValuJet crash in the Everglades of Florida. The summit was convened by the secretary of transportation at the time, Federico F. Pena, who declared a goal of zero accidents.
In 1997, a national commission on aviation safety and security, led by Vice President Al Gore and known as the Gore Commission, concluded that a more realistic goal would be to cut the rate of fatal accidents by 80 percent. Because crashes are sporadic, the goal was stated as the average of the most recent three years.
Despite the safety improvements since then, not all the trends are positive. Airports have lately recorded a disturbing number of what they call "proximity events," in which a plane lands on a runway already occupied by another because someone made a wrong turn or a controller made an error.
On July 11, for example, a United plane in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., took a wrong turn onto a runway where a Delta Air Lines plane was supposed to land; the two came within 100 feet, according to the F.A.A.
"Probably the biggest threat of all, today, many, many people agree, is not so much a midair collision as a runway incursion incident," said Richard Healing, an aviation safety expert and former member of the National Transportation Safety Board.
The F.A.A. has a radar system at many airports to warn tower controllers of conflicts on the airport surface, but the system can be confused by puddles on the pavement, which the radar sometimes misinterprets as airplanes. And it warns only the controllers, not the pilots directly.
The F.A.A. is improving the ability to track airplanes on the ground by gradually installing a system that uses a combination of radar and other means, including one that uses multiple antennas to listen for radio beacons on the plane and, by triangulation, calculate its position.
But the safety board argues that even if the new system works as designed, it is still inadequate because several seconds will elapse from the time the system sounds an alarm to when the controller sees it and issues instructions to pilots.
The F.A.A. is experimenting at Dallas-Fort Worth with "runway status lights," embedded in the pavement, that flash at pilots when a runway is occupied.
As the number of flights increases, the rate of crashes has to decline or the absolute number of crashes will rise. And as airports get busier, the risk of a crash on the ground increases.
Adding to the problem is that airliners are getting smaller, and a new class of "very light jets," seating four to eight people, is entering service. Some of those may be flown by a single pilot who is not a professional, but they will fly at the same altitudes as airliners.
The F.A.A. is facing challenges as it handles ever more traffic. It wants a new air traffic system that can squeeze planes closer together. It wants more reliance on user fees instead of taxes on passenger tickets, cargo and fuel.
But Congress has not agreed. It has approved only a temporary extension of current taxes. And although the F.A.A. administrator's five-year term has expired, the White House has not named a candidate it will try to get through the Democratic Senate.
The aviation system continues to evolve, with new runways, new terminals and new towers.
In mid-September, the F.A.A. opened a new tower at Washington Dulles International Airport. It will handle 25 million to 26 million passengers this year, but the airport's managers estimate that traffic will double by 2025. The number of runways will go to five from three, and midfield concourses will double to four.
The new tower replaces the signature Eero Saarinen model of the early '60s, which is perched next to the sweeping roof line of the terminal. It can house up to a dozen working controllers comfortably; the old one was a squeeze for nine.
At 25 stories tall, it lets controllers see even small jets between the terminals. The older, shorter tower required them to strain to see some planes taxiing between terminals.
"With the regional jets, we'd see the top of the tail through the air-conditioners," said David Bridson, a controller.


U.S. watching travelers' habits, books - The government is keeping electronic records about millions of Americans who travel abroad -- about where they go, whom they visit and what they take with them.
From the Washington Post - September 22, 2007, LATimes

WASHINGTON - -- The U.S. government is collecting electronic records on the travel habits of millions of Americans who fly, drive or take cruises abroad, retaining data on the people with whom they travel or plan to stay, the personal items they carry during their journeys, and the books that travelers have carried, according to documents obtained by a group of civil liberties advocates and statements by government officials.
The personal travel records are meant to be stored for as long as 15 years, as part of the Department of Homeland Security's effort to assess the security threat posed by all travelers entering the country. Officials say the records, analyzed by the department's Automated Targeting System, help border officials distinguish potential terrorists from innocent people.
New details about the information being retained suggest that the government is monitoring the personal habits of travelers more closely than it has acknowledged before.
The details were discovered when a group of activists requested copies of official records on their own travel. Those records included a description of a book on marijuana that one of them carried and small flashlights bearing the symbol of a marijuana leaf.
The Automated Targeting System has been used to screen passengers since the mid-1990s, but its data collection has been greatly expanded and automated since 2002, according to former Homeland Security officials.
The millions of ordinary travelers whose records are kept by the government are generally unaware of what their records say, and the government has not created an effective mechanism for reviewing the data and correcting any errors, civil liberties activists say.
The activists allege that the data collection effort, as carried out now, violates the Privacy Act, which bars the gathering of data related to Americans' exercise of their 1st Amendment rights, such as their choice of reading material or people with whom they associate. Activists also express concern that such personal data could one day be used to impede people's right to travel.
"The federal government is trying to build a surveillance society," said John Gilmore, a civil liberties activist in San Francisco whose records were requested by the Identity Project, an ad-hoc group of privacy advocates in California and Alaska.
The government, he said, "may be doing it with the best or worst of intentions. . . . But the job of building a surveillance database and populating it with information about us is happening largely without our awareness and without our consent."
Gilmore's file, which he provided to the Washington Post, included a note from a Customs and Border Patrol officer that hecarried the marijuana-related book "Drugs and Your Rights."
Homeland Security officials said this week that the government was not interested in passengers' reading habits and that the program was transparent and allowed redress for travelers inappropriately stymied. "We are completely uninterested in the latest Tom Clancy novel that the traveler may be reading," department spokesman Russ Knocke said.


A Huge Hole in Airport Security
March 16, 2007 Editorial, NYTimes

While enormous effort is focused on screening airline passengers for explosives or weapons before they can board a commercial flight, it remains shockingly easy for airport employees to sneak into secure areas and carry dangerous materials onto a plane without detection. That frightening truth was underscored by a flagrant breach of security at the Orlando Airport in Florida last week that was detected only because of an anonymous tip.
The breach in this case was a small-bore smuggling operation. A customer service agent for Comair, a subsidiary of Delta, and another Comair employee used their work uniforms and identification badges to gain access to restricted areas, where they stored a duffle bag containing 13 handguns, an assault rifle and a stash of marijuana near the departure gates. One of the men later retrieved the bag and took it aboard a Delta flight to Puerto Rico as carry-on luggage. Based on the tip, authorities pulled one of the men off the plane before it took off and, disturbingly late, caught the other with the duffle bag in San Juan.
It is small comfort that the Transportation Security Administration says that no passengers were put at risk because at least two federal marshals were on board. Had the smugglers been terrorists, they could presumably have fired their guns or brought down the plane with a powerful explosive.
The vulnerability exposed by this incident is the lack of checkpoint screening for thousands of workers who have access to secure areas. The T.S.A. relies instead on background checks at the time of hiring, supplemented by random screening at many airports. In the wake of this latest embarrassment, the T.S.A. flooded five airports with a temporary surge of additional agents, hardly a solution.
The Orlando airport, long confronted by smuggling, took a more sensible course by starting to screen all workers before they enter secure areas, thus joining Miami and Heathrow Airport in London. A sensible bill introduced by Representative Nita Lowey of New York and co-sponsored by Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, both Democrats, would create a pilot program at five airports to screen all workers with access to secure areas under the standards used for passengers. Airports typically object that such screening is cumbersome and costly. But it seems foolish to screen passengers and airline crews vigilantly and then ignore workers who could do just as much damage.