'Massive failure of security' at Boston airport

By GEOFF CUMMING and AGENCIES

Boston's Logan International Airport may have been chosen as a soft touch for launching airborne terrorism.

Long-standing security concerns at the busy airport took on new weight as authorities pondered the apparent ease with which two groups of hijackers boarded the two planes used to destroy the World Trade Center.

FBI investigators were looking at whether there was any sign that the hijackers got inside help at the airport.

"This is a massive security failure. To think that this got through Logan Airport constitutes a massive failure," said Tufts University security expert Robert Pfaltzgraff.

Safety issues have arisen repeatedly at Logan in recent years, including concerns about the reliability of low-paid security workers charged with inspecting baggage for weapons and keeping intruders out of secure areas. The airport's owners were fined $178,000 in 1999 for 136 security violations.

Logan was monitored after plainclothes agents were able to board planes parked overnight at gates and walk into restricted areas without facing questions.

Staff operating luggage-screening devices also routinely failed to detect test items such as pipe bombs and guns.

FBI agents questioned workers from Globe Aviation Services, which has the contract to provide security at the terminal used by American Airlines. The company pays $8.25 an hour and requires staff to pass a background check and have a high school qualification.

Philip Gold, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute think-tank in Seattle, said airport and airline ground crews could have helped the hijackers.

"In the past, the single biggest problem with hijackings has not been passengers, it has been ground crews," said Gold, who has written extensively on terrorism.

"They are the ones that put bombs and weapons on board for the passengers."

Many baggage handlers and airport security personnel were low-paid foreign nationals not necessarily motivated to carry out their jobs, Gold said, advocating tighter screening of workers.

But Ashton Carter, a former assistant secretary of defence in the Clinton Administration, said security firm workers should not be blamed for letting the hijackers on to the planes.

"If it is true that the crew was overpowered with small knives and box cutters, then it is not obvious that security was lax. Instead, we may have to seriously fortify the planes, put air marshals on board and retrain flight crews," he said.

"We are asking these people to do a basic job and they are paid for that. They did their job because these hijackers seem to have brought on items that are not illegal. We don't need PhD's manning these stations."

Logan officials say the airport is a natural target for terrorists because international flights filled with fuel can be commandeered.

It is the world's 26th-busiest airport and the 17th busiest in the United States.

Its five passenger terminals and five runways handle an average of 1200 flights and 67,000 passengers a day.

Owned and run by the Massachusetts Port Authority, it has more than 16,000 employees and has its own state police troop, with specially trained officers to ensure compliance with Federal Aviation Administration security rules.

The American Airlines Boeing 767 with 92 people on board used in the first twin-tower assault in New York left from terminal B at 7.59 am.

The United Airlines flight which hit the second tower departed 15 minutes later from terminal C.

Aviation officials say passengers across the nation can expect extremely tight security and possible delays when air traffic resumes.

Only ticketed passengers are likely to be allowed past security checkpoints and kerb-side baggage check-in will probably not be permitted.

Ken Capps, spokesman for Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, said: "I think we can safely say that aviation security as we know it has changed forever."

Full coverage: Terror in America

Pictures: Day 1 | Day 2

Brooklyn Bridge live webcam

Video

The fatal flights

Emergency telephone numbers for friends and family of victims and survivors

These numbers are valid for calls from within New Zealand, but may be overloaded at the moment.

United Airlines: 0168 1800 932 8555

American Airlines: 0168 1800 245 0999

NZ Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade: 0800 872 111

US Embassy in Wellington (recorded info): 04 472 2068

Survivor databases

Air New Zealand flights affected

Air NZ flight information: 0800 737-000.