Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: Travelers at Pittsburgh airport shrug off danger
By Carl Prine
No security delays occurred in Pittsburgh International Airport on Saturday, the day after a failed midair terrorist attack on a Northwest Airlines flight landing in Detroit.
Federal officials expect few snafus here or across the country during the busy travel days ahead.
The Transportation Security Administration’s preflight screeners in the Pittsburgh airport yesterday handled lines of passengers that snaked from their X-ray machines to the City of Bridges Cafe but moved swiftly.
Nationwide, police agencies were alerted that the TSA would “surge” guards — including canine patrols and specialists designed to detect aberrant human behavior — to beef up security at undisclosed airports.
“We’re not seeing any kinds of problems here,” said Pittsburgh International Airport spokeswoman JoAnn Jenny. “We’ve been advised that TSA will make sure that there is heightened security nationwide, but there is nothing special planned for Pittsburgh.”
Additional screening
In a written statement, Janet Napolitano, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, praised those of the 278 passengers and 11 crew members aboard Northwest Flight 253 who subdued a suspected Nigerian terrorist as he allegedly tried to detonate a crude syringe bomb strapped to his leg nearly 20 minutes before landing in Detroit.
Napolitano said her agency “immediately put additional screening measures into place” on all domestic and international flights. She said security measures on international flights are “designed to be unpredictable” and passengers might not notice the same heightened measures everywhere.
“The American people should continue their planned holiday travel and, as always, be observant and aware of their surroundings and report any suspicious behavior or activity to law enforcement officials,” said Napolitano.
Retrieving their baggage from a Southwest flight from Orlando, Charleroi’s Pete Keating, 65, and his wife, Aleta, 64, said they saw no increased security boarding the plane or arriving in Pittsburgh.
“People, I think, feel that they’re more protected by each other,” said Aleta Keating. “I don’t think that we’ll ever go through what happened on 9/11 again because people will do what they did in Detroit. We’re not going to let terrorists get away with that, and we’ll stop it before they can do anything.”
Carriers issue advice
Pittsburgh’s fourth-busiest carrier, United, warned passengers to expect security delays lasting from 20 minutes to 1 1/2 hours on flights originating in Europe.
On its Web site, Air Canada warned customers that new travel restrictions will limit passengers’ ability to move inside the plane during parts of their flights, restrict passengers to one piece of carry-on luggage and restrict access to it during the last hour of their flight. Passengers could encounter delays, cancellations and missed connections as a result of heightened security on the three daily nonstop flights between Pittsburgh and Toronto, according to Air Canada.
“The safety of our customers and staff is our number one priority at Air Canada,” said Duncan Dee, executive vice president and chief operating officer, in a statement posted on the carrier’s Web site.
“Our operations teams will be working closely with airport and government authorities to minimize any inconvenience to our customers and to ensure that our customers reach their destinations safely and comfortably.”
With nine daily flights out of Pittsburgh, American Airlines advised travelers to check their flight status before heading to the airport and to allow extra time for boarding. The carrier’s Web site warned that TSA had added unspecified measures for all flights from foreign destinations “in addition to the normal screening that all passengers go through to enter secured areas.”
Continental Airlines wants customers to arrive at the airport an hour earlier than they normally would because of increased security. With 15 flights to and from Pittsburgh, however, the airline didn’t report any significant delays related to heightened measures.
JetBlue, Southwest, AirTran and other carriers that serve mostly domestic destinations reported business as usual.
“We’re more impacted by weather,” said Jenny Dervin, spokeswoman for JetBlue Airways in New York. “So far, we’ve seen no impact at all because of security guidelines.”
Other Pittsburgh carriers including US Airways, Delta/Northwest and Midwest Express did not return messages.
“So far, no problems,” said Taylor Lotis, 18, of Jefferson Hills, a guard on the Penn State Behrend women’s basketball team catching an AirTran flight with fellow players to a Daytona Beach tournament.
“We had more problems with our bus ride. It sort of caught on fire, but we got here OK.”
According to the transportation agency’s Bureau of Travel Statistics, the Christmas and New Year’s travel period typically is the second-busiest annually, behind Thanksgiving.
Pittsburgh International Airport’s Jenny said the bustle locally should begin to wane about Wednesday.
Terror tides
As local air travel dwindles, scrutiny over counterterrorism efforts likely will accelerate in Washington, where attention is focused on Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, 23, the suspect in the failed Northwest Airlines bombing. The Nigerian reportedly told authorities after he was detained that he had links to Islamist terror organization al-Qaida. His name had been listed on the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment roster maintained by the National Counterterrorism Center, along with more than 500,000 other identities.
The $500 million database that mixes lists of suspected terrorists from 16 U.S. intelligence agencies is often termed “TIDE” by federal authorities. It’s not the same roster as TSA’s “no fly” list, but counterterrorism experts have long criticized both databases because they often include redundant or fake names.
In 2008, Congress criticized TIDE’s “Railhead” program when planned upgrades seemed to limit how intelligence data were searched and shared by agents and analysts. Potentially crucial messages forwarded to TIDE by the CIA had not been “properly processed, reviewed or included” in the list, making it impossible to tell whether information had been vetted or criminal leads followed.
“A lot of our counterterrorist efforts aren’t working, but overall we’ve hardened our defenses,” said Bernard Finel, senior fellow at Washington’s American Security Project and author of the annual “Are We Winning?” reports on defeating Islamist terror.
“Sometimes, because of secrecy, it’s hard to share information across classified lines. Maybe it’s time for us to consider biometric identification instead of just names.”
Biometric technologies scan and detect a person’s unique characteristics, such as fingerprints, facial features or eye retinas.
Finel said U.S. anti-terrorism cooperation with West African nations such as Nigeria had been considered a success because America remains relatively popular there, and the region isn’t a major source of Islamist violence, as are Somalia, Pakistan or Afghanistan.
Outside of war zones, al-Qaida had been losing, with its popularity dipping and key affiliates such as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group defecting from the cause, according to Finel.
“But it doesn’t take a lot of people to carry out attacks like the latest one in Detroit,” Finel said. “We had been looking more at Somali groups as a threat, because they could be recruiting in the U.S.”
