Aviation needs much more security
Frank Eugene Corder spent the evening of Sept. 11, 1994, drinking booze and smoking crack. Then he went to the Aldino Airport in Churchville, Md., stole a Cessna P150 plane and took flight. Hours later he crashed onto the White House lawn just south of the Executive Mansion.
The National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the crash was intentional. Indeed, Corder fulfilled the ambition he had expressed to friends: to kill himself “in a big way” by flying an airplane into the White House or into the dome of the Capitol.
It is doubtful — though not beyond the realm of possibility — that Corder or some other suicidal pilot could fly a small plane all the way to the White House in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C.
For the U.S. military now stands ready to shoot down any plane — including a commercial jetliner — that enters prohibited airspace above Washington and violates the “no-fly” zone encompassing the White House and the Mall from the Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol.
But it is quite possible today for a suicidal pilot, like Corder, or like Mohammed Atta, who piloted the jet that hurtled into the World Trade Center’s north tower last September, to fly a small plane into, say, the Sear’s Tower in Chicago, the Transamerica building in San Francisco or One America Plaza here in San Diego.
While federal authorities have heightened security at the nation’s major airports and increased scrutiny of commercial airline passengers, they have all but ignored small airports; neglected to monitor the more than 200,000 small, private planes; and failed to screen passengers who fly aboard private charters.
That gaping hole in America’s air security network offers a ripe opportunity for those who would reign terror upon American cities.
In fact, just last week, the FBI issued an unsettling warning that terrorists might still be interested in using small general aviation aircraft for suicide attacks.
But what are federal authorities doing about it? Hardly anything.
Pilots flying small planes out of small airports remain virtually anonymous. Their licenses don’t even have their photos. They are not required to file flight plans in clear weather, so, air traffic controllers have no way of knowing when a small plane has veered off course.
Meanwhile, passengers flying private charters are still able to board without inspection of their identification, without passing through metal detectors and without having their baggage screened.
It is not hard to imagine terrorists chartering a small plane or jet — which is as simple to do as renting a car — loading it up with explosives and flying it into some vulnerable target.
“A small plane with five pounds of C-4 will bring down the George Washington Bridge,” said University of Pennsylvania professor and terrorism expert Stephen Gale in a recent Austin American-Statesman article. “You can knock out and blast all sorts of things.”
The general aviation industry thinks calls for tighter security for small planes and private charters are an overreaction to Sept. 11. “There has never been a successful terrorist hijacking of a (chartered) aircraft,” argued James Coyne in a USA Today commentary, president of the National Air Transport Association.
Yes, perhaps, but a misguided 15-year-old pilot did crash a Cessna 172 into a Tampa, Fla., office building in January, leaving behind a suicide note expressing empathy with Osama bin Laden and support for the Sept. 11 attacks.
And a New York police helicopter did chase away a single-engine Cessna that approached a U.S. warship passing the Statue of Liberty during the city’s recent Fleet Week parade.
At least one lawmaker on Capitol Hill is trying to get the federal government to ratchet up security for small planes and private charters.
At the very least, authorities should require background checks for pilots and crews on small planes and charters. And they should mandate screening of passengers and their luggage for weapons and explosives.
(Joseph Perkins is a columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune and can be reached at [email protected].)