Deadline Looming – How Will Airline Cargo Get Screened

Here’s the dilemma. By next August, every piece of freight that is shipped aboard a commercial airline will be required to be screened for bombs just as luggage already is. The catch? There are not enough screeners to scan the thousands of tons of cargo that will need to be scanned.

Airlines, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration and shippers that use the cargo holds of passenger planes face an Aug. 3 deadline to create a system of private cargo screeners to make sure cargo doesn’t carry bombs or other explosives.

It’s no small challenge. On virtually every flight, airlines stuff the holds of passenger planes with everything from North Atlantic lobsters to delicate computer chips. As much as 10 million pounds of cargo up to 500,000 boxes are shipped on passenger planes every day, and Orlando International Airport is one of the nation’s busiest air freight hubs.

Until recently, almost none of it went through security.

Shippers and federal authorities are meeting in Orlando this week to review what must be done to get enough companies certified in time to beat the August deadline.

And the industry has a lot of work to do, said Marc Rossi, a branch chief for the TSA’s Certified Cargo Screening Program.

“There will not be enough (certified screeners) to meet the demands of the supply chain, not at the current rate of certification. …,” he said. “That’s millions of pounds (of cargo) that don’t have a solution, projected out.”

The problem is that most freight flown on passenger planes comes pre-packaged on pallets or in large cargo bins. But federal law calls for every little box to be individually screened by either humans, X-ray machines, explosive-detection equipment or trained dogs.

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Passenger Arrested For Bomb Threat At St. Louis Airport

An airline passenger was arrested after authorities say he made a bomb threat when flight attendants asked him to close his laptop computer before takeoff.

The man was on board a United Express flight to Washington Saturday afternoon at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. Airport spokesman Jeff Lea said that when attendants asked him to close his laptop, “he mentioned a bomb or made a bomb threat.”

Police were called, and the man was arrested. The flight was delayed more than two hours while police searched the plane for explosives but nothing was found.

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Passenger Allowed to Board Plane After Grenades Found in Luggage

It might seem uncommon for a passenger to be allowed on a plane after grenades are found in his luggage, but the Transportation Security Administration is standing by the procedure after reportedly doing just that on Tuesday.

Federal airport screeners found two grenades in the luggage of a man set to board a JetBlue flight at New York’s Kennedy airport, according to MyFOXNY.com.

TSA specialists then determined that the explosives were inert and allowed the passenger to board the plane without ever informing police, the TV station’s Web site reported.

The TSA maintained that it’s up to their own personnel to determine when to call police, and said the agency was reprimanded for notifying authorities in a similar incident last month, MyFOXNY.com reported.

The port authority police union told the station that this was a “blatant disregard for public safety.”

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