World Tourism Blog

Snow storms. Security breaches. An idiot with explosives in his underwear and a security response of comparable intelligence.

If past is prologue and the last few weeks are any indication, 2010 is shaping up to be an extremely turbulent year for travelers.

On Sunday, Terminal C at Newark Airport was shut down after a man was seen walking the wrong way through an exit toward the terminal’s secure area. Flights were grounded, seated passengers were hustled back to the terminal and thousands had to be rescreened.

The same day, TSA announced new directives that require passengers traveling to the U.S. from or through 14 countries deemed “state sponsors of terrorism” or “other countries of interest” to go through enhanced screening.

And on Monday, travelers woke up to what could be a new — and increasingly unpleasant — era in air travel.

Ever since Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day, it’s become increasingly clear that there’s more to making air travel safe than foiling a single attack. As the Nigerian jihadi has told the FBI, there are others just like him waiting to strike.

The problem, of course, is that with security personnel on alert for explosive powders, Abdulmutallab’s associates have no doubt already shifted their tactics. The next attack is as unlikely to involve underwear as it is shoes or liquid explosives disguised as energy drinks.

“The problem security personnel face is that they’re always chasing something that’s already happened,” says Douglas Laird, an industry consultant and former security director for Northwest Airlines. “They’re not prepared for something that happens in the future.”

Witness the immediate response to the Christmas Day incident, which was characterized by a randomly applied, crazy quilt of restrictions based on Abdulmutallab’s actions. No getting up from one’s seat within an hour of landing. No blankets, pillows or personal belongings on laps. No in-flight entertainment on international flights.

The Christmas Day plot has also renewed the call for more full-body scanning at screening stations, a technology that backers say would likely have revealed the explosives Abdulmutallab carried. With 40 such machines currently in use in 19 U.S. airports, TSA has purchased another 150 and recently announced plans to purchase 300 more over the next few years.

But such machines — which produce near-naked images of passengers — are no panacea. Privacy issues aside, the machines suffer the same shortcomings as their predecessors: Spending millions of dollars to target what terrorists have tried in the past will only hasten their efforts to try something else. It’s a sad fact, but even the newest screening machine won’t catch a committed terrorist with a suppository.

“Instead of looking for bad things — nail clippers and rogue bottles of shampoo — security systems need to focus on bad people,” says Giovanni Bisignani, director of the International Air Transport Association. “Adding new hardware to an old system will not deliver the results we need.” Hard money training.

For the second time in a little more than a year, a glitch at one of the two centers that handle flight plans for the nation’s air travel system set off delays and cancellations for passengers around the country.

The snarl Thursday — traced to something as simple as a single circuit board — prompted calls for more money and manpower at the Federal Aviation Administration, which has struggled without success for years to overhaul the air traffic system.

The circuit board, at an FAA center in Salt Lake City, is part of a multibillion-dollar nationwide communications network that the agency has spent years installing as part of plans to modernize air traffic control.

A government watchdog said last year that the network was over budget and plagued by outages. On a single day in 2007 alone, the failure of parts of the network was responsible for 566 flight delays.

Aviation experts are unsure whether any system that relies on the interconnectedness of computers can prevent glitches from causing havoc unless there are sufficient backup systems to handle the thousands of flight plans filed each day in the U.S.

“A good communications system should have enough redundancy that a failure shouldn’t hurt it that badly,” said Michael Ball, a University of Maryland professor who specializes in aviation operations research.

Hundreds of flights were canceled or delayed from Atlanta to Houston to Phoenix after the problem began about 5 a.m. The glitch was fixed about four hours later, but scattered delays were reported throughout the day. Planes in the air were never in danger.

While the delays were not as bad as those caused by a major winter storm, passengers — already frustrated by add-on fees for checking bags and the other hassles of everyday air travel — were miffed. Hard money training