Issues Related to Expanding the
Scope of Airport Security

After an attack at the El Al ticket counter at LAX airport in Los Angeles on 4 July 2002, many passengers have questioned whether airport security at a U.S. airport should be increased. In that attack, a gunman went to the El Al ticket counter area and opened fire with a handgun. He killed two people and wounded four others before being killed by an El Al security officer. This ticket counter was in the public area of the terminal where anyone can freely enter without being searched or screened by the TSA.

The following sections provide an overview of some of the issues related to possible changes that could eliminate or reduce the likelihood of future violent incidents at airports.

• Change the laws to prohibit weapons from all areas of the airport terminal
  At present, only authorized security and law enforcement personnel are permitted to carry weapons in the secure areas of the airport. This typically includes the gate areas of the terminal. Currently, at the typical U.S. airport, ticket counters, baggage claim, and a number of other services are outside the secure areas of the airport. In addition, U.S. federal laws that prevent weapons and other dangerous items from the secure areas of the airport do not apply to these other areas of the terminal. Local, county, and state laws determine what restrictions exist for guns, knives, and other items that are banned from the secure areas of the airport.

  Changing the law by itself will not likely deter someone intending to use a weapon unless there is some kind of screening to prevent weapons from entering the area. That screening would either have to be universal, or it would have to be sufficiently random and frequent to deter most would be perpetrators from carrying weapons.

  Another issue related to changing this law would affect passengers who are legally traveling with weapons that are properly packed in checked luggage. Either this practice would have to be ended or passengers would have to check their weapons at location remote from the inside of the terminal.
• Move the security checkpoints to the entrances to the airport terminal
  Changing the location of the security checkpoints would be a very effective barrier against weapons, but it would require a significant increase in the scale of the screening effort. At present, only passengers, airport staff, and airline staff are screened.
  A range of other people such as ticket agents, skycaps, family and friends of passengers, and other airport visitors enter the airport terminal, but are not screened in any way. All of these people, some of whom may enter and exit the terminal several times in the course of an average day, would have to be screened.

  This would likely lead to one or more of the following side effects: an increase the number of people dedicated to airport security, a severe restriction in the number of people allowed in the airport, elimination of some services within the terminal, reduction in the number of terminal entrances, an increase in the waiting time to pass through security, and increasing the number of people around the outside of the terminal.

• Increase the number of security personnel in the non-secure areas of the terminal
  This is probably the easiest and quickest change that can be implemented. However, preventing a violent act from occurring would depend on the ability of the security personnel to identify suspicious behavior. This would likely result an a relatively large number of people being questioned or even searched for every potential perpetrator caught. Because the non-secure areas of U.S. airports are under local, county, or state laws when it comes to the possession of weapons, it may not be illegal for someone to carry a knife or gun into a terminal, so security personnel would have no legal basis for detaining a suspicious person simply for legally carrying a weapon.

  Because this kind of change requires no physical change in the design or the layout of the airport terminal, it would likely be the least disruptive option. However, because it is dependent on personnel, it would mean that either security personnel currently responsible for other duties in the airport would have to be reassigned, or the current security force would have to be expanded.

• Make no changes in terminal current security
  While events such as the 4 July 2002 attack at LAX can result in death and severe disruption of airport operations, whether any specific effort should be made to reduce or eliminate that kind of risk will depend on several factors such as the likelihood that future events will occur. Most parts of an airport's terminal area are designed to be freely accessible to the general public. Also in the U.S., the public has relatively few restrictions on what kind of weapons can be carried in or around the non-secure parts of a terminal. Any change would have to take into account these basic realities be either working around those realities or by fundamentally changing the kind of airport access that currently exists. While making no changes may be the logical result of an analysis of the costs and benefits of new security options, it may not be socially acceptable by the general public, airline passengers, or the aviation community.

Other Resources
General Airport Security Advice
Airport Security Case Study from 1996
Things you Should Not Bring on Board