Flight Attendants Question Decision, Some May Refuse To Fly

Citing a need to focus screening efforts on items of greater potential danger to passengers, TSA Director Edmund "Kip" Hawley (file photo, right) announced Friday the agency will relax its screening guidelines on certain items that have not been allowed in the cabin of a passenger airliner since 9/11.

Under the new guidelines -- which, if approved by the Department of Homeland Security and the OMD, would take effect on December 22 -- scissors less than 4" long will be allowed through security checkpoints, in carry-on bags and on a person's self. Small tools such as screwdrivers and wrenches will also be allowed onboard, as long as the items aren't more than 7" in length and do not have a sharp cutting edge.

As was reported earlier this week in Aero-News, the TSA said the decision was made to allow the screeners to focus their efforts on what is seen as the next big terrorist threat to domestic airliners -- explosives in the cabin. Hawley told reporters Friday the TSA has devoted its recent training efforts to identifying both assembled IEDs, as well as partially assembled components, in carry-on luggage.

"I am convinced, that the time now spent searching bags for small scissors and tools can be better utilized to focus on the far more dangerous threat of explosives," said Hawley.

The TSA director added this explosives training paid off recently for a screening crew in St. Louis, who found a hidden explosive device on a carry-on bag that had been planted by security personnel.

According to figures released by the TSA, internal studies have shown that checkpoint screeners spend half of their screening time searching for cigarette lighters -- a recently banned item -- and that they open one out of every four bags to remove a pair of scissors.

Faced with limited personnel, and with other measures in place to prevent a 9/11-style attack such as hardened cockpit doors that would prevent a terrorist from commandeering an aircraft with box cutters or scissors, the TSA says time saved by not pulling bags to investigate X-ray images of scissors and similar items would be better utilized searching for IEDs, and by conducting random secondary screenings.

There are those, however, who question that logic -- most adamantly, flight attendants who now feel they will be placed at increased risk.

"Obviously you want an explosive-free cabin," said US Airways flight attendants union president Mike Flores to Aero-News. "But you don't do it at the expense of prohibiting the other items, you do it in addition to that."

Flores added some flight attendants will refuse to fly if the new guidelines are put in place -- which could put them out of a job.

Hawley told reporters Friday the flight attendants' concerns are unfounded. "The items we're mentioning today are not a risk for the transportation system," he said.

Flores disagrees. "I can't see that Kip Hawley's assessment of risk with a 7-inch screwdriver impaled in my neck is not worthy of their protection," he told Aero-News.

FMI: www.tsa.gov