Airlines won’t ask those two questions
Beginning Thursday, airport passengers will no longer wince, laugh or robotically answer two questions that government officials now admit did nothing to snare terrorists.
For years, airline ticket agents have posed two questions to passengers: “Has anyone unknown to you asked you to carry an item on this flight?” and “Have any of the items you are traveling with been out of your immediate control since the time you packed them?”
On Thursday, Transportation Security Administration chief James Loy will announce their elimination from the airline check-in process, a federal transportation spokesman confirmed late Wednesday.
“It was well-intentioned and perhaps necessary at the time,” Leonardo Alcivar said. “Given the new security elements put in place … they’re simply obsolete.”
The change will be effective immediately, Mr. Alcivar said.
Ticket agents have been questioning passengers at least since 1986. That year, a security guard questioned a pregnant Irish woman at London’s Heathrow Airport. He discovered that her Jordanian boyfriend had duped her into carrying a bomb onto a jet operated by Israeli air carrier El Al. The 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, prompted more calls to improve screening of passengers.
U.S. officials initially adopted a series of questions. That list was eventually whittled down to the two questions that have been in use since the Persian Gulf War.
Officials say that to the best of their knowledge the security questions have never produced any arrests.
The elimination of the questions is the latest move made by Mr. Loy to rid airports of senseless security procedures. Last week, he announced that passengers would be allowed to carry beverages in paper or foam cups through metal detectors. They had been banned since late June.
Mr. Loy, the former Coast Guard commandant, replaced John Magaw last month as TSA chief in charge of securing the nation’s airports.
While Mr. Magaw was widely criticized by airport directors because he didn’t seek their input on new security measures, Mr. Loy has spent his first weeks on the job meeting with airport directors and asking for advice.
On Wednesday, Mr. Loy and TSA officials were meeting with airport officials, including Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport chief executive Jeff Fegan.
Among the matters discussed was the easing of the 300-foot parking ban, Mr. Alcivar said. Like other airports nationwide, D/FW Airport parking spaces within 300 feet of the terminals were ordered closed after the Sept. 11 hijackings. The best parking at D/FW Airport, about 2,700 spaces closest to the four terminals, has remained closed because of the rule.
