_____Editorial Roundup_____ • Other newspaper opinions on the need for increased airline security in the aftermath of the attack on America. _____What's Your Opinion?_____ • Share Your Views About Editorials and Opinion Pieces on Our Message Boards • About Message Boards E-Mail This Article Printer-Friendly Version Subscribe to The Post

AMERICANS ARE being told that their best answer to the terrorists is to resume their daily lives, clinging defiantly to this nation's traditions of liberty, openness and diversity. At the same time, they are being told that Sept. 11 must represent the first day of a new era, an awakening to the dangers of the world to which they had thought themselves invulnerable. This contradiction will play out over time in many arenas, among them the nation's airports. The conversion of four domestic commercial airliners into weapons of terrorist warfare has united the nation on the need for much tighter security measures, but not for the first time. Security at airports has been studied, restudied, stepped up and then relaxed time and again. A stream of reports and tests had shown that security remained alarmingly porous. The apparent ease with which four teams of armed hijackers boarded four airliners at about the same time only confirmed what had been known: Gaping holes remain. Over time the nation has opted for travel that is quick, cheap and as convenient as congestion will allow. An effective response now will involve greater inconveniences and expense. But changes must occur.

The federal government must take over security screening operations, which now are the responsibility of the Federal Aviation Administration but are carried out by airport operators and airlines that for the most part have relied on low-paid, ill-trained workforces with high turnover rates. Few have gone through full criminal background checks, though they will have to from now on. The metal detectors and X-ray machines they operate have been shown in tests to miss as many as 40 percent of weapons sent through by testers. A government force, highly trained to elicit and interpret telling answers from travelers, can be the most effective screening system, as Israel and several other countries have demonstrated. Other measures, some of them ordered yesterday, must produce far better matching of all luggage with travelers and polite but more thorough searching of passengers and their possessions.

Ground crews, catering service personnel -- anyone with access to the airfields -- must be more closely controlled. Here again, investigators have reported that "piggybacking" -- when intruders follow authorized employees through doors and gates -- was the most successful method of entry. Unguarded elevators and unchecked activity on board parked planes have been all too common.

In the air, pilots need better protection, starting with far stronger cockpit doors, sealed tight in flight. Though passengers' lives still may be threatened, the pilot would maintain control of the craft. Pilots can alert air traffic controllers by radio or by entering a special code in their transponders that transmits information from the aircraft; but as happened Tuesday, these transponders can be turned off. Military pilots may need such a switch, but if terrorists do somehow enter a commercial airliner cockpit, they should not be able to shut down the system this way. Cockpit voice recorders, which now record up to 30 minutes, should be altered to record throughout a flight without turn-off switches.

These and other possible measures -- armed marshals on every flight, more intricate checklists for the crew before takeoff -- will mean longer lines, slower check-ins, costlier tickets. They also offer no guarantee of safety. Yet the country has no choice. Extremely stringent measures are being put in place now, but in the past, such spasms of reform have not lasted long. This time staying power will be key.