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Passenger Screening in 2009
After a record of long and arduous delays, the federal government-designed program for better prescreening of airline passenger names against the terror watch list is expected to be rolled out in early 2009. Homeland Security Officer Michael Chertoff announced that the program—called Secure Flight—would be able to validate air traveler information with a greatly reduced chance of being mistaken for a similarly-named person on a watch list. “We know that threats to our aviation system persist,” Chertoff said. “Secure Flight will help us better protect the traveling public while creating a more consistent passenger prescreening process, ultimately reducing the number of misidentification issues.”
Misidentifying passengers has been one of the biggest areas of complaint in air travel since before 9-11, and has a widespread reputation for putting tens of thousands of innocent U.S. residents through protracted searching and questioning measures before finally being cleared to fly. Passengers are currently prescreened for domestic flights by the individual airlines, although airlines are not always dialed into the most up-to-date version of watch lists; those that contain the names of people intelligence agencies have flagged as not allowed to be on planes. With the new program, the airlines become responsible for gathering a passenger’s gender and birth date on top of the already required full name.
However, not all involved are pleased with the changes being made. The International Air Transport Association is unhappy with the final rule because of the inherent cost to airlines that will need to adapt their systems to sync with Secure Flight. Industry experts cite that the consumer will inevitably bear the added cost of the program.
Secure Flight has been delayed many times due to privacy concerns, with this being the third version of a program that has been integral to enhanced aviation security since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The program is set to be phased in for domestic flights during the first half of 2009, with international flights to follow later in the year, officials said.