By Calvin Biesecker
Despite a congressional mandate that 100 percent of cargo loaded on passenger planes be screened for explosives this year, it won’t be until 2013 before this will likely happen, a senior Transportation Security Administration (TSA) official said yesterday.
By the end of 2010, TSA estimates that 62 percent of inbound international air cargo will be screened for explosives, John Sammon, assistant administrator for Transportation Sector Network Management at TSA, told the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Transportation Security. Next year, about 80 percent of foreign air cargo will be screened, rising to 92 percent in 2012 and reaching 100 percent in 2013, he said.
DHS had already said it would not meet the international target this year.
Reaching agreements with foreign governments on the United States air cargo screening mandate has been challenging. Stephen Lord, director of Homeland Security and Justice Issues at the Government Accountability Office, agreed that it would take about three years to get agreements and capacity in place overseas to do the screening.
Sammon said the three-year timeline is similar to what the European Community believes it will take to get the various standards, enforcement and verification mechanisms in place to do the screening. The screening will be physical, not risk-based, he said.
Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), the author of the air cargo screening legislation, said that the Department of Homeland Security isn’t pressing the issue hard enough with foreign governments.
Markey’s legislation also required 100 percent screening of cargo on passenger planes departing from U.S. airports. That deadline is Aug. 1 and Sammon reiterated DHS’ stance that the date is firm.
To meet the domestic component of the mandate, TSA established a voluntary screening program aimed at distributing responsibility for screening throughout the supply chain, from shippers down to forwarders, with airlines having ultimate responsibility for ensuring that screening either has been, or is, done. There are currently nearly 800 Certified Cargo Screening Facilities, and while that number is below what TSA believes is ultimately necessary, Sammon said there is sufficient capacity now to meet the Aug. 1 deadline.
German air carrier Lufthansa said at the hearing it will meet the screening mandate in the U.S. today.
“Albeit a massive challenge, considerable resources, money and time were allocated to adopt and carry out this strategy effectively and to ensure a robust business continuity plan,” Harald Zielinski, head of Security for Lufthansa Cargo, said in his prepared remarks.
Despite a recommendation by the GAO that TSA have an alternative plan come Aug.1, if there is a lot of unscreened cargo that airlines won’t be able to screen prior to a planned flight, Sammon said his agency has no intention of creating a Plan B. He said that shippers and freight forwarders have known about the screening program for long enough yet early on there was apathy on the part of many of them. Once they realized the deadline was real and was sticking, more shippers and forwarders got involved. If TSA were to step in and create an alternative, these firms would back out, he said.