Experts Blast Airport Security
Security experts are stunned but not necessarily surprised that four domestic commercial jets were hijacked on Tuesday to carry out attacks on New York and Washington.
Airport security in the country is so poor, they say, that bypassing security measures and wreaking havoc onboard a flight is easy.
"I think a major terrorist incident was bound to happen," said Paul Bracken, a Yale University professor who teaches national security issues and international business. "I think (this incident) exposed airport security for what any frequent traveler knows it is -– a complete joke. It's effective in stopping people who may have a cigarette lighter or a metal belt buckle, but against people who want to hijack four planes simultaneously, it is a failure."
In a coordinated terrorist attack against the United States, four commercial passenger jets crashed on Tuesday, two into New York's World Trade Center and one into the Pentagon, near Washington.
Tuesday's quadruple hijackings were the first incidents of an American aircraft hijacked on domestic soil since 1987. In that hijacking, a disgruntled former employee of the former Pacific Southwest Airlines used invalidated credentials to board the plane, where he proceeded to kill his former manager and both pilots. The plane crashed near San Luis Obispo, California.
American Airlines Flight 11, carrying 81 passengers and 11 crew members, crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center in Manhattan shortly before 9 a.m. EDT. About 15 minutes later, United Airlines Flight 175 from Boston to Los Angeles, with 56 passengers and nine crew members on board, slammed into the south tower. Both towers eventually collapsed.
Half an hour after the second crash, American Airlines Flight 77 took off from Washington's Dulles Airport en route to San Francisco, carrying 58 passengers and six crew members, but was diverted and crashed into the Pentagon. Less than an hour after the third crash, United Flight 93 en route from Newark, New Jersey, to San Francisco, crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, with 38 passengers and seven crew members aboard.
American Airlines officials confirmed that all passengers on board the planes had died.
Government authorities have not completed their investigation and haven't released the details leading up to the crash. The Federal Aviation Authority declined to comment.
But independent security specialists were not reticent.
Unlike Israel's El Al Airlines -- which sets a standard for airline security by stationing armed "sky marshals" on board every flight -- the security implemented by U.S. airlines is merely a "façade," Bracken said.
Airline representatives don't always follow procedures and ask only to see photo identification when they check bags.
The people monitoring the metal detectors at U.S. airports are "making $5.60 an hour" and watch a large volume of passersby at once, Bracken said.
"This is not their (airport security agents) fault," Bracken said. "This is management's fault. I teach at a business school, and we're going to study (this incident) for years as an example of poor strategic management. They (the airports) could have put in a security system where the people make $10 an hour that includes people from the airlines and (a machine) that could detect plastic weapons."
