PARISThe global aviation industry is going through the worst storm of its
history, buffeted by a collapse in business and soaring safety fears following
the terrorist attacks by airplane hijackers on Sept. 11. Calm will return
eventually, experts say, but flying will be significantly less convenient and
somewhat more expensive than before.
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In the United States, where the crisis has bit deepest, more
than 100,000 airline workers have been laid off or soon will be. Airlines have
abandoned up to one flight out of five, and planes are flying one-third full.
Worldwide, airlines are expected to lose a total of approximately $10 billion
this year, according to the International Air Transport Association, and a
number of airlines seem doomed to disappear in takeovers or bankruptcy
proceedings. For the present, airlines are offering some tempting reduced
fares to win back customers, but fares will be higher in the long run because
passengers will have to pay more for higher insurance premiums and new
security measures.
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How much more is anyone's guess, but initial calculations
suggest the burden may not be too onerous. A $5 levy on every passenger who
flew in the United States last year would have raised $3.5 billion, or more
than the projected cost of currently proposed safety steps.
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Passengers may find higher ticket prices less troubling than
the inconvenience caused by the loss of routes as airlines consolidate, and by
time-consuming, intrusive anti-terrorism precautions.
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As airlines recover, they are likely to operate fewer services
with larger aircraft, a trend that was forecast anyway because air travel has
grown so rapidly that it is straining the capacity of airports and controlled
flight routes. Hundreds of older and less economical aircraft, which now
belong to airlines in developed countries, will either be mothballed or sold
to developing countries. Immediate security changes - some in the United
States were announced Thursday by President George W. Bush - include increased
law enforcement presence in airports, random identity checks and physical
searches of travelers, aggressive towing of unattended vehicles, elimination
of curbside luggage check-in, and exclusion from hand baggage of anything that
could conceivably be used as a weapon, such as manicure scissors and
fingernail clippers.
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In the longer term, airline check-in staff will be trained to
identify passengers who might pose a threat, which could lead to complaints of
discrimination if it means removing customers because of their national
origin. Drunken or obstreperous passengers will also be more easily blocked
from flying.
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Armed but anonymous sky marshals will fly on aircraft once they
have completed training. They already operate on some European airlines, a
fact that the carriers do not like to discuss publicly. Screeners at airports
will be better trained. The backgrounds of airport workers will be more
closely checked. Frequent no-notice inspections, with stiff penalties for
violations, will be carried out at most airports.
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Edward Cornish, editor of The Futurist magazine, said travelers
would have to get used to the kind of intrusiveness by authorities that
passengers have had to endure in Israel, where grueling, pre-flight
inquisitions sometimes last two hours and can be unsettling even for the
innocent. "It won't be like the old Soviet Union or Nazi Germany,"
Mr. Cornish said, "but I think these new measures are nevertheless going
to be fairly intensive."
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Many security experts in the industry think the El Al approach
would not work on a large scale. It would simply be too expensive and
cumbersome, and neither governments nor the airlines are calling for its
introduction. But Philip Baum, the editor of Airline Security magazine, said
it ought to be possible to take some elements of the El Al program - "for
example, looking at people." Behavioral Analysis Skills Needed
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"I wouldn't go so far as to call for full passenger
profiling, but you need experts around the airport who are able to carry out
some form of behavioral analysis," Mr. Baum said. "We have tended to
go down the technological route because everyone wants a quick-fix solution.
But technology does not replace the human brain. We need people who are alert
and trained and professional out there at the screening points."
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In the past, airlines have objected to onerous screening not
only because of the direct cost, but also because of the effect it would have
on tightly scheduled departures at the giant hub airports, where millions of
passengers connect to other routes. With the likelihood that passengers will
have to go through screening not only at their departure point but also at the
hubs, airlines may have to rewrite their schedules to allow for additional
check-in time.
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"I guess it will be quite damaging, because the whole
timing of the interface between shorter flights and longer flights is going to
change," said Paul Sillers, an independent aviation designer in London.
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Travelers in America are likely to see more changes than those
abroad, because the United States has been comfortable with less strict
procedures than in many countries, specialists say. A former researcher with
the Federal Aviation Administration, Kenneth Harris, said that Americans would
soon get used to the tougher security standards that most Europeans take for
granted.
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"Remember, there was a time, certainly within the memory
of most middle-aged Americans, when we didn't have any security at all,"
he said. "Then people got used to going through X-ray machines," he
said. "The same thing will happen again."
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The short-term impact of the Sept. 11 catastrophe has been
frightening, not only for the airlines themselves but for the entire aviation
and travel industry. The World Travel and Tourism Council in Madrid said that
it expected travel in the United States to decline by 10 percent to 20 percent
on an annualized basis. In the European Union, if travel fell by 10 percent
over the next 12 months, it would reduce the EU's gross domestic product by
1.9 percent - equivalent to the Union's projected economic growth rate next
year - and cost 1.2 million jobs, the council said.
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Air travel may not drop by anywhere near that much in Europe,
though. The estimates are at best informed guesswork because there are few if
any precedents to follow, and some experts say the recovery could come earlier
than many are forecasting in the current crisis atmosphere. Global airline
travel was increasing at more than 5 percent a year before the disaster, and
could bounce back quickly if and when the terrorist threat is perceived to
have receded and confidence returns.
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The executive vice president of Airbus, John Leahy, said that
the crisis did not reflect a massive structural change, but was a scenario
more like that seen during the Gulf War when the sector "came back almost
as dramatically as it went down."
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The transport division chief at the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development, Wolfgang Huebner, also warned against excessive
pessimism. "Before Sept. 11, there had been fantastic growth and airports
were reaching their limits," he said. "Everyone is now going to the
other extreme. In the long term, the industry will go back to normal, but with
tighter security."
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In Geneva, the International Air Transport Association,
representing most of the world's airlines, estimates that carriers outside the
United States will lose at least $7 billion this year. In addition, losses in
the United States are estimated to range from $2 billion to $3 billion.
"We don't have a very optimistic view of things at the moment," said
a spokesman, Tim Goodyear.
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Airlines Were Already Hurting
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The association's "most likely" scenario assumes a 15
percent drop in international air travel for the last four months of 2001,
averaging out to a 5 percent drop for the year, Mr. Goodyear said. In February
1991, when shooting started in the Gulf War, world air traffic declined by 25
percent, and it took a year to return to historic growth patterns.
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Not all the losses can be attributed to the terrorist attacks.
Despite the growth in traffic, the airlines were hurting before September
because of the economic slowdown. Now some troubled airlines may have to look
either for a government bailout or a takeover partner to avoid bankruptcy.
"Every medium-sized airline that is not locked into a large, successful
alliance is extremely vulnerable," Mr. Goodyear said.
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Mr. Huebner of the OECD said that airline consolidation was on
the cards before Sept. 11. A $15 billion government package of aid and loans
in the United States, and expected government measures in Europe, will help
soften the blows, however.
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The crisis also has affected the two manufacturers of large
commercial airliners, Boeing and Airbus - but both say they can ride out the
storm and remain profitable even though about 1,000 aircraft have been at
least temporarily grounded in the crisis.
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Boeing is laying off between 20,000 and 30,000 workers,
although it not announced any cancellations of orders. Airbus, which is
cushioned by a backlog of orders for 1,600 aircraft, is likely to face some
"adjustments" to delivery schedules, but its program to produce the
380 superjumbo jets will not be affected, according to the company's chief
executive in North America, Allan McArtor. Indeed, the trend toward fewer but
larger aircraft should help that program. However, Lufthansa AG has postponed
a decision to buy 15 A380s, for which there are 67 firm orders and 50 options.
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Security Improvements Are Vital
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The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were not facilitated by any
particular breach in the rules. Nevertheless, improving security now is seen
as vital, not only for preventing future attacks, but also to convince the
public that flying is safe. In addition to aggressive pre-flight screening of
passengers, physical changes in the cockpit and enhanced use of technology are
likely.
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Sealing off the cockpit from passengers, for instance, seems
such an obvious solution to the hijacking problem that the question is why
this was not done before. But there are technical obstacles. Engineers say
heavy doors could be ripped from the walls with explosive and dangerous force
in the event of a sudden depressurization. They could also make it impossible
for the crew to escape in the event of a fire, or prevent rescue workers from
getting in. Mr. Leahy of Airbus said his company already was experimenting
with strong but light doors made of bulletproof Kevlar. Boeing is carrying out
similar research. As an interim measure in the United States, and probably
elsewhere in the world, doors to the flight deck will be locked with a dead
bolt, with probably a mesh behind the crew to trap anyone trying to force his
way in. The Air Line Pilots Association in the United States also argues that
pilots should be permitted to carry small arms or electrical stun guns into
the cockpit. Regulators are leery of this, fearing the guns could be seized by
hijackers. Members of a flight crew could run amok, too, as a Fedex pilot did
in 1994, trying to overpower his colleagues and crash a fully loaded DC-10
into the company's package sorting center in Memphis, Tennessee.
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Another possibility under consideration by various security
authorities, manufacturers and airlines includes the use of cameras aboard the
aircraft to relay information to the flight crew and the ground. Mr. Leahy
said Airbus was looking at placing small cameras around the cabin so that
"if an incident were starting to develop, pictures of what's actually
going on in the cabin in real time could be sent back to the ground."
Some experts have suggested that pilots should have the option of ceding
control of the aircraft to ground controllers, or linking controls to terrain
databases to prevent planes intentionally flying into buildings. This is not
possible in the short term.
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Experts concur in saying that the focus in security has to be
on the ground, and that a new breed of terrorist determined to die rather than
to negotiate has to be kept off aircraft at all costs.
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The founder and president of the Foreseeable Risk Analysis
Center and a former director of tourism in New York, Charles Slepian, said
techniques such as biometrics - identifying passengers by their facial
characteristics - and hand-print or iris recognition, would quickly come into
widespread use and would "enable us to improve our security to a level
that would be acceptable," if not as intensive as Israel's. Such methods
were coming anyway, not because of terrorism but to enable legitimate
travelers to pass more quickly through customs and immigration checks. Another
probability according to change predicted by security experts are concealed
cameras at airports that record images of all who pass and match them against
a database of suspected or wanted individuals.
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Security Can Be Less Obtrusive "It won't be in-your-face
security, which makes a lot of noise but isn't particularly effective,"
Mr. Slepian said.
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"People at the airports will be far more skilled than what
you find today. You will find a lot more computer technology, and I believe
that all aircraft will have video cameras in the cabin section and monitors in
the cockpit along with capabilities to transmit what is going on in the cabin
and airplane to appropriate law enforcement and military agencies
internationally," he said. "Passengers might not immediately notice
all of this, so flying will still be a familiar experience."
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Mr. Slepian said that if airlines could better guarantee
delivery of baggage to its intended destination, this in itself would improve
safety, because passengers would not feel they had to carry luggage into the
cabin. An increasing number of airlines, anyway, are restricting cabin
baggage.
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If security standards are generally higher in Europe than the
United States, industry analysts say, it is because governments more directly
control airport security. In the United States, it was left to the airlines,
which, until Sept. 11, were particularly concerned about holding down costs.
For example, a British security company, Securicor PLC, provides more
training, better career opportunities and better wages and social benefits to
its airport employees in Europe than to its comparable workers in the United
States. Ironically, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has had more
leverage over foreign airports - which had to introduce rigorous security
methods as the price for flying to the United States - than over domestic
airports, where bomb-sniffing machines and other equipment have sometimes gone
unused for lack of trained staff.
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Even after safety measures have been put in place, standards in
Europe are likely to remain higher than in the United States, because
regulations in the EU call for X-ray or hand-screening of all checked-in
luggage by next year - though most airports do it already.
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Despite the current crisis, Mr. Leahy is convinced that the
airline business will come back, and most experts agree with him. The only
question in their view is when: in months, or a year or more? If the latter is
the case, many airlines will not survive. Mr. Slepian, however, said he is
convinced that Americans will quickly get over their fear of flying because in
the final analysis, "we are totally reliant on air travel in this
country.
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"I think the dynamics of the airline industry are such
that the goal is to get as many aircraft off the ground in a given day as
possible and offer the greatest variety in terms of departure times. I don't
foresee much of a change."
