ALPA: Screening Must Be Tailored, Commerce-Friendly,
Cost-Effective
ALPA has renewed its long-standing call for an air cargo
screening policy that is risk-based, rather than a
“one-size-fits-all” approach, and for fundamental
security enhancements that will bring all-cargo flight operations
up to passenger airline standards.
“The events of late last week demonstrated what ALPA has
warned government and industry about for many years: air cargo
operations are vulnerable and the threat is very real,” said
Capt. John Prater, ALPA’s president, said in a news release
Wednesday. “We know that risk-based screening and other
security enhancements are urgently needed to close existing gaps
that put at risk passengers, cargo, and pilots, as well as persons
on the ground, if a terrorist were to be successful in bringing
down an aircraft over a major metropolitan area.”
Cargo carried in domestic operations by passenger airlines is
thoroughly screened. Security measures used by all-cargo airlines,
however, are vastly different from those used by passenger carriers
and are much less reliable. All-cargo operations must use a
threat-based approach to identify trustworthy shippers and freight
and subject them to one level of screening, while those
individuals, organizations, and materials about which little is
known would be subject to a greater level of scrutiny. Doing so
would allow cargo screeners to effectively focus resources on
shippers and freight that pose the greatest risk, while cargo from
trustworthy shippers and forwarders would pass through the
screening system more quickly and cost-effectively.
“A ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach that demands
the same type of screening for every piece of cargo will be costly,
threaten commerce, and fail to enhance aviation security,”
said Capt. Bill McReynolds, a FedEx Express pilot who is chairman
of ALPA’s President’s Committee for Cargo. “A
screening strategy that is tailored to the threat, and is
commerce-friendly and cost-effective will focus resources where
they are needed to secure air transportation, while keeping freight
moving.”
In addition to a threat-based approach to screening, ALPA is
pressing for “One Level of Safety and Security” for
both passenger and cargo flight operations. Currently, the
all-cargo segment of the airline industry is exempt from many of
the security policies that are mandated for passenger aircraft. For
example, all-cargo aircraft are not required to be equipped with
cockpit doors, despite the fact that all-cargo airlines routinely
transport passengers traveling with cargo. Passenger airliners are
not only mandated to have cockpit doors, but the doors must be
hardened and resistant to intrusion. In addition, all-cargo flight
crews are not required to receive the same security training as is
mandated for passenger airline pilots.
“In 2006, the U.S. government declared that the greatest
security risk facing the all-cargo airline operations was a hostile
takeover of the aircraft,” continued McReynolds. “Yet,
four years later, our country still fails to require that all-cargo
aircraft be equipped with cockpit doors at all, let alone those
made with the hardened material that provides an additional layer
of security and are required on passenger airliners.”
To achieve a single level of aviation security, ALPA
advocates:
- Incorporating greater use of technology and vetting systems in
screening of cargo loaded on all-cargo aircraft.
- Installing hardened flight deck doors on all-cargo
aircraft.
- Requiring specific security training for all-cargo flight crew
members.
- Enhancing perimeter security for all airport areas where cargo
flights operate.
- Increasing background vetting of those individuals with
unescorted access to cargo and cargo aircraft.
In addition to cargo security enhancements, ALPA is also calling
for safety improvements for cargo carriers, including improving the
safety of transporting lithium batteries and instituting a single
level of aircraft rescue and fire-fighting standards for all
airline operations.