Public Hearings On February 9, And Another Date Ahead

There are public hearings coming up in February on the subject of transportation security. The two relevant hearings of the US Senate Full Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation will take place on February 9th at 10 in the morning, and on a date yet to be announced (this second hearing was originally scheduled for the afternoon of February 9th).

The Committee is chaired by Republican Senator Ted Stevens (right) of Alaska. The ranking minority member is Democrat Daniel Inouye of Hawaii. (Neither of those places had senators until 1959, and now their senators are bossing the rest of us around... go figure).

[Note that according to Stevens's bio he has quite an aviation connection: "During World War II he was a pilot in the China Burma India theater, supporting the Flying Tigers of the 14th Air Force. He received two Distinguished Flying Crosses, two Air Medals, and the Yuan Hai medal awarded by the Republic of China." According to the FAA's Airmen Registry, Sen. Stevens holds a commercial pilot license with ratings for airplane single engine sea and multiengine land, but he last renewed his medical in September, 2002. Conversely, Sen. Inouye (below) is not a pilot, but he was an even bigger hero in World War II as an infantryman.]

The February 9 morning hearing will take place in Room 562 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, starting at 10 am. The hearings may be televised by CSPAN, but in any event a witness list with prepared testimony, and a live webcast, will be available at this link.

The Committee will be looking into two of TSA's most controversial programs, Secure Flight and Registered Traveler, "to discuss the issues that have prevented these programs from being launched." The witnesses have not yet been announced, but if a roomful of Senators can stop preening long enough to give the TSA witnesses enough rope to hang themselves, it could have some entertainment value.

The postponed session will address the problems with the physical screening of passengers and carry-on luggage. It will also include, as the Senate committee staffers put it, "issues pertaining to TSA's Federal passenger screener force, TSA procurement policy, air cargo screening, and the deployment of explosive detection technology." This one may be less inflammable than the first, but you can track its schedule -- and, when it gets rescheduled, listen to the webcast -- here.

This Senate Committee has powerful oversight and legislative authority over aviation -- which is to say, it has quite a bit of power to jerk us around. You can track the Committee's upcoming hearings, and read the testimony from past hearings (many of which, like this and this relate to aviation), at the FMI link.

[Note that the webcasts require the proprietary RealPlayer, which we don't recommend as the install is spyware-rich... we're sure that has nothing to do with a Senator from Washington State having been a founder of Real. Purest of coincidences. Cha-chingg.]

FMI: http://commerce.senate.gov/hearings/index.cfm, (Note also this link to the Aviation subcommittee, which has no hearings scheduled yet in 2006, but still has last year's hearings posted.)