Security lapses
revealed at Honolulu
International Airport

Federal investigators slip
through doors and gates, even
onto departing planes

From Star-Bulletin staff
and wire reports

Government safety inspectors passed undetected into supposedly secure areas of Honolulu Airport and seven other major airports across the country early this year.

In some cases, airport security was so lax that Transportation Department investigators were able to sneak through without tickets and settle into seats aboard planes ready to take off, the department's inspector general said in a report made public yesterday.

Details of exactly what happened in Honolulu were not revealed in a report released by the department's Federal Aviation Administration.

But Thomas Rea, the FAA Pacific representative based in Honolulu, said today that while "access security problems" were detected at the airport in January, access to controlled areas was later satisfactorily tightened.

Rea said Honolulu Airport had the least amount of security problems among the eight airports checked and now has "very high compliance as a result of our investigation."

"We were aware the inspector general visited in January, and we made our own investigation" after hearing the report, he said.

In their series of tests, federal investigators slipped through security by following employees through doors. They also walked unchallenged through concourse doors, gates, jet bridges and cargo facilities. Some drove through unmanned vehicle gates or rode unguarded elevators.

The IG's latest report on airport security shows that the nation's airports remain vulnerable to intruders wishing to slip through security amid increasing threats to U.S. air travel.

The FAA "has been slow to take actions necessary to strengthen access-control requirements and adequately oversee the implementation of existing controls," the IG's office said.

While the names of the major airports tested were not included in the report released to the public, the Washington Post in today's editions quoted unidentified sources who identified three of the airports as New York's John F. Kennedy, Washington's Reagan National and Chicago's O'Hare. The five others were the main airports in Atlanta, Miami, Salt Lake City, San Francisco and Honolulu.

The IG's report blamed airport operators and air carriers for not enforcing security procedures and airport employees for not meeting their security responsibilities. The IG also said the FAA was failing to ensure that its security policies were being implemented.

In March, when early results from the IG investigation showed security holes, the FAA began testing at 79 of the nation's largest airports and opened nearly 400 investigations into airport weaknesses.

"These tests showed airports had fixed the problems and that industry, once focused, was capable of providing high levels of compliance with regulations," the FAA said in a statement.

The FAA said it would work with airlines and airports to better monitor doors and improve security training of airport employees.

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Star-Bulletin reporter Russ Lynch and the
Associated Press contributed to this report.