Air cargo securityShippers campaign against full screening of cargo on planes
The TSA decided that starting last August, it would mandate the screening of all cargo on passenger planes loaded in the United States; it said its rule would not apply to cargo placed on U.S.-bound passenger flights overseas, or to cargo-only flights; the Obama administration announced new cargo rules Monday banning freight out of Yemen and Somalia; it also restricted the shipment of printer and toner cartridges weighing more than a pound on all passenger flights and some cargo flights; the overall cargo security rules were unchanged
Shippers are resisting full screening of cargo // Source: aircargonews.com
Despite knowing for decades that terrorists could sneak bombs onto planes, the U.S. government failed to close obvious security gaps amid pressure from shipping companies fearful tighter controls would cost too much and delay deliveries.
Intelligence officials around the world narrowly thwarted an al Qaeda mail bomb plot last month, intercepting two explosive packages shipped from Yemen with UPS and FedEx.
It was a tip from Saudi intelligence, however, not cargo screening, that turned up the bombs before they could take down airplanes. Company employees in Yemen were not required to X-ray the printer cartridges the explosives were hidden inside. Instead, they looked at the printers and sent them off, U.S. officials said.
The Washington Times reports that the scare is prompting officials in Washington and around the world to rethink air cargo security. Lobbying by the multibillion-dollar freight industry has helped kill past efforts to impose tough rules.
In 2004, when the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) considered requiring screening for all packages on all flights, the Cargo Airline Association downplayed a terrorist threat. It argued slowing down shipping for inspections would jeopardize the shipping industry and the world’s economy.
“As a practical matter, all-cargo aircraft operators today are permitted to accept freight from all persons and entities all over the world, including unknown shippers, precisely because of the lack of any credible threat to all-cargo aircraft,” the association, whose members included FedEx, UPS, and other shippers, told the agency.
“TSA believes that a requirement to inspect every piece of cargo could result in an unworkable cost of more than $650 million” in the first year, the agency wrote in 2004. The government wanted security, TSA said, “without undue hardship on the affected stakeholders.”
The U.S. requires all packages be screened before being loaded onto passenger flights originating in the United States. There is no such requirement enforced for all cargo loaded onto U.S.-bound international passenger flights or on cargo-only flights, such as UPS and FedEx planes.
Jetliner bombings in the 1970s and the explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 led the United States to examine cargo security long before the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington made counterterrorism measures a top priority.
The Washington Times notes that those efforts came in fits and starts. For example, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and U.S. Postal Service once had such a poor relationship that neither agency carried out their part of a mail security
