Gov't. Study Says FAA Falls Short On Bomb Safety.

<FONT SIZE="+3"><B> Gov't. Study Says FAA Falls Short On Bomb Safety</B>

By Barbara Cook

<I>Washington, D.C. </I>- The Federal Aviation Administration is taking issue with a government study that concludes the safety agency has made little progress toward developing new explosives detection technology to safeguard airline passengers.

While agreeing with the General Accounting Office's conclusion that technical problems have slowed development of a sophisticated system to screen checked baggage, the FAA said it already has a number of unspecified corrective actions under way to improve its security research program.

A law passed after the 1988 terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 270 people, mandated the FAA to accelerate the research and development of new technology to protect passengers from terrorists. The law, which was passed in 1990, set November 1993 as the date for the FAA to have new explosives detection equipment in place. That deadline has long since passed, and the FAA still is far from completing its work, GAO said. The FAA has 40 detection systems in the developmental stage, but tests have been completed on only seven of them and none fully meet the agency's performance requirements, the GAO said.

The FAA is responsible for setting performance standards, assisting private companies in developing systems and certifying the systems as adequate for airline use. To carry out these mandates, the FAA has both stimulated the development of new equipment plus supported the design of methods to improve the survivability of aircraft, including blast-resistant luggage containers. The agency has received $130 million in federal funding to oversee these security research responsibilities since the 1990 law was enacted.

Despite these efforts, GAO said that "although several devices show promise, technical problems are slowing the development and approval of the devices," adding that it could take the FAA an additional two to five years to approve new luggage screening equipment for airline use. "Similarly," GAO added, "FAA's efforts to enhance aircraft survivability are promising but are several years from completion." As an example of the types of technical problems and development delays that the FAA has experienced with the new x-ray technologies, GAO cited a March 1993 test of a system that cost about $4 million to develop. The project was delayed about a year because the equipment was too slow in processing baggage. The FAA is continuing to refine the system.

Moreover, GAO said, the FAA does not plan to test the prototype systems at busy airports. It instead plans to rely on tests conducted at its own laboratories, not at major domestic airports where real-life travel conditions would more accurately pinpoint weaknesses in the proposed systems. The FAA argued that using actual airport situations would needlessly add time and cost to the certification process. During the process of the GAO study, however, FAA officials agreed to test promising explosives detection devices at airports "as necessary.