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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