Airline pilots can skip airport scanners, pat-downs

TSA announces policy shift just days before the hectic Thanksgiving holiday travel period.

By David Koenig and Joan Lowy

DALLAS — Amid a growing protest against stepped-up and intrusive screening of airline passengers, the government has cut a break for one very influential group of travelers the pilots.

The Transportation Security Administration agreed Friday to let uniformed airline pilots skip the body scans and aggressive pat-downs at the heart of a national uproar. The pilots must pass through a metal detector at airport checkpoints and present photo IDs that prove their identity.

The victory for pilots followed a 2-year lobbying campaign by their union leaders that reached a fever pitch in the past two weeks. Their bid was boosted by hero pilot Chesley Sullenberger, who said pilots should be treated as "trusted partners" in the fight against terrorism.

But just days before the hectic Thanksgiving holiday travel period, TSA chief John Pistole offered little hope of a similar reprieve for regular passengers, who have complained more loudly about the new measures. Some opponents are urging travelers to refuse to go through full-body scanners.

If the loosely organized Internet campaign succeeds, security lines at the nation's airports could be snarled. Those who refuse a body scan can be forced to undergo time-consuming fingertip examinations, which include clothed genital areas and breasts, by inspectors of the same sex as the traveler.

The complaints of pilots such as Sullenberger, who successfully landed a jetliner in the Hudson River in January 2009, gave weight to the movement to roll back the new procedures. With pilots apparently satisfied, the TSA's most prominent critic might be a California software engineer who, during a pat-down, recorded himself threatening a TSA inspector, "If you touch my junk, I'll have you arrested."

Pilots are avoiding that debate. American Airlines pilot Sam Mayer said passenger screening is a security matter for the TSA to decide. All he knows, Mayer said, is that intrusive pilot screening made little sense.

Pilots have argued that any pilot intent on terrorism could simply crash his plane, and no amount of imaging at the security checkpoint could stop that. Besides, under another government program to make them the last line of defense against terrorists, pilots are allowed to have guns in the cockpit.

The changes promised by TSA on Friday are "basically what we've been after," Mayer said. "Pilots are not the threat here; we're the target."

John Prater, president of the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents pilots at several major airlines, said the unions have been negotiating the changes with TSA for two years. He said changes were already in the works, but were speeded up by the backlash against the new imaging machines and searching techniques.

The TSA said beginning Friday, pilots traveling in uniform or on airline business could pass security by presenting two photo IDs, one from their company and one from the government, to be checked against a secure flight crew database. Their unions said pilots could skip the pat-downs immediately.

While pilots celebrated Friday, other airline employees feel left out.

Thom McDaniel, president of the flight attendants' union at Southwest Airlines, said if pilots can bypass the screening process, so should his members. Making flight attendants go through the regular screening is "a double standard," he said.

source: http://www.statesman.com