Airport Chief Steamed Over Security

The typically mild-mannered director of Raleigh-Durham International Airport called federal security regulators "dictatorial" and threatened a "showdown" Thursday after they frustrated his attempts to add an extra lane at a terminal checkpoint.

"If I wind up in jail one day," director John Brantley told Airport Authority members, "it's not because I wasn't trying to help our customers."

Brantley also revealed that a recent clash with a federal security representative over access to the airfield nearly led the Federal Aviation Administration to shut down air traffic at the airport.

The Transportation Security Administration, a new federal agency, posted representatives at U.S. airports when it took over security in February, and eventually it will hire and train all baggage screeners. But airport officials across the country are chafing under the new federal oversight, which they say leaves them out of the decision-making process.

The dispute at RDU flared when the airport and Southwest Airlines wanted to add a third X-ray machine and magnetometer to eliminate long lines that form during peak travel hours and early mornings at the north end of Terminal A.

Southwest Airlines bought the equipment before the Transportation Security Administration took control Feb. 17, and the airport finished wiring the area for the new equipment more than a month ago.

But Jeff Parrott, the agency's interim federal security representative at RDU, would not let the airport and Southwest install the equipment because he had been directed to make no changes to security checkpoints.

Brantley said the Transportation Security Administration was saying, in effect, "that customers should not be well served. ... They should stand in line more."

He said he was tempted to install the equipment anyway. "Bring it on, Jeff," Brantley said. "The hell with it."

Parrott said his actions were "in line with TSA policy," but he referred questions to the FAA in Atlanta. A spokeswoman there referred calls to the Transportation Security Administration in Washington.

The agency is in the process of designing safe, efficient, customer-friendly checkpoints, TSA spokesman Paul Turk said. "Making changes at this point that might have to be changed again later is simply not a productive idea at this time."

The conflict that almost shut down air traffic at RDU stemmed from a requirement that airports add locks to gates or post guards at airfield gates to check identification and inspect vehicles. RDU posted a guard at its main airfield gate but didn't do so at another gate, to which only airport employees have access.

Parrott discovered the gate closed but unguarded and ordered the airport to add a lock and chain or to post a guard there, Brantley said. Airport officials thought those steps were unnecessary because the gate is used only by RDU employees, who have already gone through background checks to gain their security clearance.

When Parrott found out that the airport had not added the lock and chain, he called FAA officials in Atlanta, who gave RDU an hour to do so. The FAA threatened to stop all traffic in and out of the airport if the airport didn't comply, Brantley said.

The airport installed the lock and chain, but Brantley said he plans to pursue the issue and other problems with the federal agency through North Carolina's congressional delegation. He said he plans to meet with U.S. Rep. David Price, a Democrat from Chapel Hill, about it.

Turk said that the requirement to secure the airfield with a guard or a lock is "a security directive that has the force of law." He also said the agency wants to have a good relationship with individual airports, but "the TSA will comply with the law, and the TSA will enforce the law."

RDU and other airports are struggling with new federal rules, including a ban on parking within 300 feet of terminals and a requirement that a law enforcement officer be posted at each security checkpoint after the National Guard stops providing security May 31.

The rules have hurt the financial bottom line at RDU. The airport had to shut down some short-term parking lots, which airport officials blamed in large part for parking revenue that was $1.7 million less than the airport expected in the fiscal year that ended March 31.

The airport's law enforcement budget already has risen nearly 50 percent to $2.4 million for the current fiscal year to help cover the cost of extra security. The security officers at checkpoints will be federal employees by the end of 2003, an airport spokeswoman said, but it is unclear who will pay for the officers in the meantime.

It is not a good idea to be disrespectful to government employees although it is easy to do because they hold themselves in such high regard. This is the way of the future. Wait until the first labor action or better yet, the first time the government union employees refuse to cross the picket lines of some other piddly airpart union trying to extort something from an airport employer.

These people will put airlines out of business and then shrug with a "tough, we are just doing our jobs." That is, until some problem arises then see how fast federal slugs point to some other guy as really being responsible. This was a very bad idea and things can only get worse!!

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