While President Bush last week unveiled proposals to beef up airline
security, some safety experts contend that a number of alternative measures
could be implemented, more cheaply and quickly, to lure Americans back to
flying. The most direct, and controversial, expedient: Arm the pilots, which
the President has publicly opposed.

It's quite possible none of the September 11 hijackings would have succeeded
if the pilots had been armed, contends William Vassell, chief executive of
Command Security a New York security company.

Be that as it may, Bush instead is seeking an increase of in-flight air
marshals to deter would-be air pirates. But former pilot Stephen Luckey, a
leading expert on airline safety, says a sky marshal can be overcome and
disarmed in a passenger-cabin attack. Indeed, passenger-train robbers in
Europe have foryears employed knockout gas to subdue passengers -- a ploy
that could be easily aped by potential airline hijackers. Luckey, who is
chairman of the National Security Committee for the Air Line Pilots
Association International, adds that testers with fake badges and real guns
have been breaching security zones at airports for years.

Luckey, who carried a gun in the 1970s and early 1980s while flying for
Northwest Airlines (with the blessing of the company's brass), contends guns
are needed in the cockpit as a final line of defense against hijacking. He
says pilots could be trained to be proficient in firearms and deputized as
federal agents in as little as a month. FBI agents who are also trained
pilots could be placed in cockpits right now, he adds.

There are several other steps to protect passengers, experts tell Barron's,
that can be in place in a matter of weeks, not the four-to-six months that
President Bush says it will take to implement his $3 billion security plan.
Bush's proposals include a big increase in the number of sky marshals;
stronger doors for aircraft cockpits; federal takeover of airport security;
and the stationing of National Guard troops at airport inspection stations
to
prevent breaches.

Enhanced security need not come at undue inconvenience. The Federal Aviation
Administration currently is ordering new security measures at check-in that
could make air trips more of a hassle than driving in some cases.

"The industry is bleeding from a gut wound, and the FAA is trying to kill it
off," complains Luckey, who believes lengthy security checks will chase away
business travelers, who are airlines' most profitable customers.

The government also has instructed security guards to begin patting down
passengers if and when the U.S. military launches attacks abroad. Passengers
already have been instructed to show up three hours ahead of scheduled
departures because of long lines at the check-in counters.

In contrast, frequent fliers at Israel's highly security-conscious Ben
Gurion
International Airport already can pass through security at walking speed
because handprint-reading kiosks confirm their identities. Nearly 80,000
Israelis not considered security risks have enrolled in the system.

Of course, the security dilemma in the U.S. is many times more complex than
that of tiny Israel. The U.S. airlines board 665 million passengers and air
shippers haul 30 billion tons of cargo each year. In the U.S. alone, there
are about 8.5 million flights a year, according to the Air Transport
Association.

But, as first steps, inexpensive technology to prevent hijackers from
boarding planes using false identification can be deployed. Electronic palm
readers were used at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Several banks
already use optical scanners and thumbprint readers to confirm the
identities
of account holders. The technology is getting smaller and more
sophisticated.
Global Pathways, a Reston, Virginia company, has teamed up with URU
Technologies to produce a prototype of a "smart" credit card that allows a
customer to provide positive thumbprint identification to the cashier. If a
thief tries to use the card, it simply will not work. The technology could
be
applied to passports and drivers licenses, according to Global Pathways'
Carolyn Stortstrom. There are a dozen of similar systems out there already,
we're told.

As for step two: tap other federal agents to serve as sky marshals until new
recruits are hired, trained and placed into service. The U.S. Postal Service
has one of the finest armed police forces in the world. The Department of
Housing and Urban Development has about 600 armed agents, many with SWAT
training. On top of that, we have tens of thousands of military personnel
who
could be trained for the job.

Step three: The security cameras proposed last week by President Bush can be
installed almost immediately to give the cockpit a view of what is going on
in the passenger section. Swissair has employed such a system for nearly 30
years. Schools have been using them in buses for a decade. Digital
technology
makes possible systems with candy-bar- sized cameras and five-inch wireless
monitors for just $300. Flight attendants had objected because they didn't
want their bosses to monitor inflight job performance. But, says Tom
Farrier,
director of safety programs for the Air Transport Association, which
represents airlines, "since September 11, everything is back on the table."

Step four, and perhaps the most controversial step of all, would be for
flight attendants to be trained in the martial arts to serve as a second
line
of defense in the passenger cabin.

The recent disasters notwithstanding, flight attendants are reluctant to
radically rethink their role in the cabin. "We hope that our role going
forward is safety," says Jeff Zack, spokesman for the Association of Flight
Attendants in Washington, D.C. "And what we need is to make sure that the
training is continuously updated." If experts believe that includes some
self-defense training, so be it, he says. But he adds, "attendants should
not
be cast in the role of sky marshals."

Step five: thoroughly review and upgrade the airline industry's Computer
Assisted Passenger Screening System. Few travelers are aware of this, but
since 1998, the airlines have been using CAPS to look for terrorists. CAPS
uses information obtained in the reservation process to screen out
passengers
for additional security checks. A programming flaw that was just corrected
last week prevented the system from zeroing in on any of the 19 men who the
government says were responsible for the September 11 terrorist attack.

Step six: The President should ask Congress to mandate national identity
cards so we can know who is in the country legally and also keep closer
watch
on visitors from abroad.

A national identification system was proposed during the 104th Congress in
1997 as a means of tracking undocumented workers, deadbeat parents and to
maintain data pertaining to health insurance, says Annie Anton, a privacy
expert at North Carolina State University. Outcries from civil libertarians
helped to defeat the measure. A similar bill was introduced this year in the
House of Representatives.

"People ought to be able to tell if a person is lawfully in the U.S.," says
New York City immigration lawyer Michael Wildes, who represented one of the
terrorists implicated in the Khobar Towers bombing that killed U.S.
servicemen stationed in Saudi Arabia.

Wildes says federal investigators also should be able to track the
activities
of persons here on temporary visas. "If a person is studying structural
engineering and consorting with terrorists, we want to know this." We need,
of course, to be sensitive to the concerns of civil libertarians, he says.
That said, he has this advice for the President and the decision makers: "We
don't need to be politically correct when faced with a gun to our head."