Editorial: Air Passenger Security Uncertainties Continue Five Years After 9/11

Five years after the most terrible of September 11ths, travelers still are uncertain about what they'll find every time they enter the airport. While the only things they're probably not at risk of encountering are snakes on a plane, stricter restrictions on carry-on items and carry-on luggage have made it even harder for the frequent business traveler to relax or be productive. For the past few weeks, what you were allowed to carry on the aircraft has depended on where you boarded.

While there hasn't been another major act of terrorism in the U.S. skies since that horrendous day five years ago, the events of that clear fall morning put Americans on notice that they had entered a new era of heightened risk and reduced isolation from the rest of the world. The severity of the pain and the loss that day and in the ensuing weeks made it clear that the world as we knew it had ended. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but we gulped, and then life moved on. That there has not been another such incident in America probably is more a matter of good luck, the limitations of our enemies and good police work in Pakistan and the United Kingdom than reductions in privacy and convenience for U.S. travelers. That's not to say there has been no return on our investment of billions of dollars in airport security measures and the treatment of all passengers as suspected terrorists, it's just that we can't measure it.

Airlines hardened cockpit walls and doors and armed their pilots and the federal government screened all passengers and their luggage and increased the number of air marshals. Still, most airports have not yet installed trace explosive detectors for passengers nor have they created a system to detect liquid explosives. Federal officials also haven't created a central watch list or an acceptable prescreening program for passengers.

Most surprising of all the things that haven't been done in the past five years is bringing Osama Bin Laden to justice. We are ever wary not to contribute to this day becoming a celebration of the anniversary of his cynical use of his own desperate people to commit the mass murder of U.S. civilians, as well as many international businesspeople working in the World Trade Center. That he is free five years later is not a favorable indication of our level of security today. That the Bush administration recently publicly closed the intelligence unit dedicated to tracking his whereabouts is troubling.

Of course, al Qaeda is not the only organization or set of individuals who might harm air travelers. Sadly, the destructive potential that humans have developed today far exceeds their emotional and mental stability. The truth is no amount or prescreening will detect the temporarily insane or completely deranged. That's why all passengers must be checked thoroughly. While this process should be conducted as efficiently as possible, there should be no shortcuts: Prescreening of passengers' credentials and financial data alone cannot stop them from bringing weapons onboard. Lines should move quickly for all passengers, but no one should get a looser security inspection.

Rather than enabling passengers to pay and/or be prescreened to get through the security line quicker, the Transportation Security Administration should employ processes currently used by the travel industry to expedite everyone.

For instance, why hasn't TSA tried Disney's FastPass theme park line-management system? At an airport, such a system would issue a boarding pass one to two hours before a flight, and each passenger would be assigned a specific 10-minute window in which to go through an expedited line to general security. Meanwhile, the existing line would be for those who come to the airport too late to get a FastPass or who would rather stand in line than wait elsewhere. This would stagger the security process flow, reducing the time passengers must spend standing in line.

Despite continued threats, greater inconvenience and less comfort, demand for business travel, which came to a complete halt five years ago and slowly adjusted to the new reality before ramping up again, has been strong now for a couple of years. Perhaps a little more world-wise regarding security risks, U.S. business travelers have shown more resilience in the face of terrorism, even in traveling internationally. After all, today companies only have people travel when they mean business. For the foreseeable future, travel for business will continue in growing numbers.

For most business travel buyers, supporting those travelers in the new reality has meant devising means for tracking every traveler. This focus, overwhelmingly supported if not driven by senior management, has given travel buyers more opportunity to demonstrate their value beyond controlling costs and to convince travelers to use the company's preferred booking channels. Buyers have worked with travel management companies, corporate card providers, internal and external security organizations and others to provide travelers with security information and to collect real-time data on traveler whereabouts. Many buyers also have instituted pretrip reporting and approval processes. Through such efforts, travel buyers are doing whatever they can to reduce the uncertainty over security that has become another cost of doing business travel.