Attempting to return some normalcy to air travel and get passengers back on board planes, the Federal Aviation Administration has lifted its ban on curbside check-ins.
FAA officials said Friday the procedure would resume but only for airlines that meet several requirements.
“It’s part of the overall process by the FAA and the carriers to get back to business as normal,” said Richard Doubrava, who specializes in security issues for the Air Transport Association, an airline trade group.
United Airlines was the first carrier to reintroduce curbside check-ins, beginning Thursday evening. A handful of other airlines also resumed the practice Thursday and Friday, including Trans World Airlines at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport.
Continental Airlines said it would resume curbside operations Saturday at O’Hare International and Midway Airports. Representatives for American Airlines, the nation’s largest carrier, said they hope to restart the process by early next week.
The restoration of curbside service comes amid heavy pressure from airlines, which are attempting to cope with long lines that have been forming at ticket counters as travelers slowly return to the airports. Experts disagree about whether the ban added another measure of security to the nation’s airports or was only aimed at reassuring skittish passengers.
The FAA and airport officials wouldn’t disclose the new requirements it had placed on airlines to restore curbside check-ins, though at least one skycap at O’Hare said the procedures he was following hadn’t changed.
Previous system
Before the FAA banned the practice, it had in place at major airports a system skycaps were supposed to use to identify suspicious travelers.
More Top Picks Irlen Syndrome Symptoms In Adults You Might Be Missing
In checking in passengers, skycaps enter their names in a computer connected to a passenger profiling program that flags suspicious people, or those for whom there is insufficient data. Those singled out by the process are subjected to further scrutiny, including a possible search of their luggage.
Several United passengers said they were pleased the service had been reinstated.
Michael Fuog, a sales representative for shoe manufacturer Cole Haan, usually travels with large bags of samples that are difficult to carry through airports. Only upon arriving Friday at O’Hare for a flight to Detroit did the Chicago man learn he wouldn’t have to carry his baggage to the ticket counter.
“I just said, `Hallelujah.’ When you travel as much as I do, it is just a huge, huge convenience,” Fuog said. “Obviously, we all want safety, but it’s important to get the airports running efficiently as well.”
Some outraged
Not all passengers were so receptive.
“I am furious,” said Susan Michaels of Evanston, who was dropping off her mother for a flight to Los Angeles. “This is supposed to be our war against terrorism? I don’t mind waiting a few more minutes if it’s for safety.”
The lifting of the ban was most welcomed by the skycaps themselves, who saw their incomes sharply decline after the practice was stopped. Skycaps rely on tips at the curb to supplement their incomes, although a few still received occasional tips in recent days for helping passengers transport luggage to ticket counters.
“Our livelihood is being reignited,” said Michael Harris, a skycap manager at the United Airlines terminal.
Curbside check-ins were banned shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The restriction forced all passengers to go directly to the ticket counters. FAA officials said the move provided a strict layer of scrutiny exercised by airline ticketing personnel, who could flag a suspicious traveler and their luggage.
But some questioned the FAA’s decision in the first place.
Jerry Orr, aviation manager of Charlotte/Douglas International Airport in North Carolina, called the cessation of curbside check-ins “a foolish venture that added nothing whatsoever and was actually counter-productive in terms of security provided.
“If you don’t want someone in your house, you need to stop them on the other side of the door, not when they’re in your house,” said Orr, who was one of the first airport directors to ask the FAA to restore the process.
Added Richard Bloom, director of terrorism, intelligence and security studies at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Ariz.: “The FAA had to look like it was doing something to tighten up security.”
But another security expert argued that curbside check-ins should have been eliminated altogether because of the risk that terrorists could tamper with baggage.
“The skycaps frequently walk away from the baggage kiosks, leaving checked luggage unattended,” said Robert Monetti, an aviation security expert who heads a group of families who lost relatives in the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.
“It’s too easy for someone to steal a bag tag off another piece of luggage, put the tag on a bag containing a bomb and send it into the belly of an aircraft,” he said.
Unattended cars
Although check-in restrictions are being eased, Chicago police Friday still kept strict controls over how long unattended cars could be left at terminal curbs.
In front of the United terminal, a motorist ran to his car after police summoned a tow truck. The tow truck driver was preparing to hook up the car when the man drove away.
“He got lucky,” one officer said.
As authorities eased one security measure, a Chicago alderman proposed imposing another, calling for the arming of the Department of Aviation’s 294 security officers who patrol the perimeters of O’Hare and Midway. Under pressure from Ald. Edward Burke (14th), City Aviation Commissioner Thomas Walker agreed to reconsider a policy that bars them from carrying firearms.
“This would seem to me like sending the Marines off for a mission without giving them their rifles,” said Burke of the security officers, who train at the Chicago Police Academy.