By John Patterson
Daily Herald Staff Writers
December 12, 2005

JOE LEWNARD/DAILY HERALD

An airport worker prepares to load cargo onto a passenger jet at O'Hare International Airport. One-quarter of the 6 billion pounds of cargo transported annually is moved on passenger planes, but federal officials will not say how much of it is checked for explosives or other signs of terrorist tampering.

In early September 2003, Charles D. McKinley was homesick.

So the New York shipping clerk got into a crate and shipped himself home on a cargo flight. He went from Newark, N.J., to Buffalo, N.Y. and on to Fort Wayne, Ind. There, the crate was loaded onto a different plane bound for Dallas, where McKinley's parents lived in the suburbs. He told a Dallas TV crew he got out and walked around during the flights.

The first person to detect something was amiss was the delivery driver who took the crate to McKinley's parents' home. The driver noticed eyes looking out at him and then watched, stunned, as McKinley crawled out and went inside the home. The driver called the police. McKinley later pleaded guilty to breaking laws in the process, was fined $1,500 and sentenced to a year's probation.

This "Chuck in the box" story, which is true, might be humorous if it had not occurred nearly two years to the day since terrorists hijacked commercial airliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

McKinley's case spotlights what critics ranging from airline pilots to congressional investigators say are glaring deficiencies in air cargo security.

The issue strikes close to home. Nearly 2 million tons of cargo went through O'Hare International Airport last year, and 44.4 percent of it was on passenger flights, said Joseph O'Connor, Chicago's assistant commissioner for safety and security.

Unbeknownst to many travelers, passenger jets are one of the key cargo carriers for perishable and urgent items ranging from tropical fish to pineapples to electronic components. Nationwide, nearly 6 billion pounds of cargo - one-quarter of all air cargo - moved via passenger flights last year, mostly out of sight and out of the minds of passengers.

And while all passengers are familiar with walking barefoot through metal detectors while their bags, shoes and other belongings are X-rayed, sniffed and searched, only a very small percentage of cargo actually is physically inspected, according to a recently released congressional report that questioned the reliability of current cargo security measures.

Exactly how much cargo is being screened, the Transportation Security Administration will not say.

"Just as we don't talk specifically about the number of pilots who are trained to protect the cockpits with guns or how many federal marshals we have on flights, we don't make the exact percentage available for the cargo screened. That would give terrorists blueprints to our measures," said Lara Uselding, the agency's Midwest spokeswoman.

Agency officials did say they recently had met a requirement to triple the amount of cargo randomly inspected. What the percentage is, again, agency officials would not say.

Critics contend such information is kept under wraps because people would be shocked at how low it is.

"It's amazing. We are a grape ready to be picked," said Gary Boettcher, president of the Coalition of Airline Pilot Associations, whose 22,000 members include pilots from American and Southwest airlines.

Further angering such critics was a recent move by the Transportation Security Administration to allow passengers to carry small scissors and screwdrivers on flights. It's part of a broader effort to have security screeners focus on explosives rather than small, sharp objects.

"I have not spoken to a flight attendant at any airline that isn't outraged by this," Thom McDaniel, president of Southwest Airlines flight attendants union, Transport Workers Local 556, told the Associated Press. "They want to focus more on explosives, but they're not even mentioning that the biggest threat to commercial aviation right now is still the fact that most cargo is not screened."

In a 2003 air cargo report, TSA officials declared that physically inspecting each piece of cargo is "impractical." And last year, the U.S. House rejected requiring inspections of all cargo on passenger aircraft on the same grounds. Federal officials estimated it would cost $700 million and require an additional 9,000 inspectors to do so.

Instead, air cargo security hinges on what's called the "known shipper" program, a confidential database of freight and shipping companies that have had longstanding business relationships with airlines.

The companies have been screened by authorities. Few details are available on this program. The Transportation Security Administration spokeswoman wouldn't say how one becomes a "known shipper," nor would the agency provide information on security violations by known shippers or how many have had their approved status revoked.

Critics say the system has gaping holes, pointing to instances in which people shipped themselves. In addition to McKinley's jaunt, three men from the Dominican Republican stowed away last year on a cargo plane bound for Miami by hiding in a shrink-wrapped cargo pallet. They were caught in a warehouse at the Miami airport. Similarly, a Cuban woman shipped herself in a wooden crate from the Bahamas to Miami last year. She wasn't discovered until a crew began unpacking the crate.

These examples, Boettcher and other critics say, show why the focus should be on what's in the boxes, not who's shipping them.

The most recent congressional report concluded the known-shipper program is incomplete and unreliable.

Federal officials say they're working on improvements, but contend the program is the best option available given the need to balance security with the ability to keep business flowing.

"Currently we don't have the technology where you could rapidly screen 100 percent of all cargo," said Darrin Kayser, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration.

There's no shortage of devices ranging from dogs to gamma-ray scanners that can screen cargo. But the cost can reach more than $12 million for certain kinds of scanners. That cost is per unit. It would take dozens if not hundreds to attempt to effectively screen air cargo. Even then, some scanners require an hour or more to effectively screen an item.

Time is money in the shipping industry, and even slight delays could cripple crucial supply lines and send ripple effects through the economy.

Cargo is a much larger moneymaker for even passenger airlines than most people realize, and the cargo business is booming. Consider that American Airlines, which has no cargo-only flights, is one of the top three cargo carriers in the world. The company's Web site touts that it has the capacity of moving 100 million pounds of cargo each week. Virtually every passenger airline has similar operations.

Analysts predict the global air cargo industry will grow at more than 6 percent annually for the next 20 years.

"The cargo companies don't want it to change because it slows down their operation and costs them money. The people don't want to know because it would scare them to death. The media don't usually cover it because it's not a sexy subject. And the government is just content to keep their head in the sand because if the people were to react and the media gave it the right coverage, then they would have to provide appropriation and legislation to fix it," Boettcher said. "So as long as nobody's squawking about it..."

Continue: Exactly how safe is the cargo that is being shipped on our planes?