The Rising Price of Piracy

AT 41 major airports around the U.S., ground crews smile apologetically as they ransack women's handbags, flip through businessmen's briefcases, tear open wrapped packages and even frisk some passengers for firearms, knives or other weapons that could be used to hijack a plane. For the passengers, these security spot checks are a brief, unaccustomed annoyance; for the airlines, they are a financial drag. Both the annoyance and the burden will climb sharply next week, as tough new federal regulations designed to guard against skyjacking take hold.

The Federal Aviation Administration has ordered that beginning in January, comprehensive anti-skyjack precautions must be extended to all 531 U.S. commercial airports. Each airline's employees will have to search every package and piece of baggage that is hand-carried onto a commercial plane. Heretofore, this task has been done by ticket agents or other airline employees at big airports and has delayed some flights by as much as 45 minutes. Now the lines will be additionally required to equip all boarding areas with electronic metal-detecting devices that will check the passengers themselves. Trans World Airlines, Pan Am and Delta are using new X-ray-type machines that allow technicians to see exactly what is inside a suitcase without opening it. Suitcases are placed inside the machines, and in some cases radiation from the X rays has damaged film in luggage. Besides all that, airport managements --mostly public authorities run by cities and states--beginning in February will have to hire some 4,000 armed guards to be stationed in all boarding and holding areas.

Passengers Pay. The precautions will cost the airports about $46 million, and the lines a sum that executives reckon as high as $300 million yearly--or more than the industry's estimated total 1972 profit of $225 million to $250 million. Federal Aviation Administration officials, however, say that the lines will have to spend much less than that. Whatever the final figure, the burden will fall especially heavily on some regional carriers; Ozark Air Lines, which in the first nine months of 1972 earned only $1,981,000, calculates that it will have to pay $2.5 million a year. Airline and airport managers argue that the FAA, the Department of Transportation or some other Government agency should pick up the tab. But the Nixon Administration regards even its current budget for air security as merely temporary. The Government is spending $28 million a year to pay the 1,500 sky marshals who now inspect baggage instead of riding planes.

So far the price of piracy has been relatively moderate, though still troublesome for an airline industry that has just begun to recover from its 1970-71 economic slump. Each big trunk line spent about $3,000,000 in 1972 to search passengers and carry-on luggage at the busiest airports. In addition, the lines are still out $2.5 million in ransom paid to skyjackers over the past twelve months; another $6.8 million has been recovered by federal authorities.

Even when ransom is recovered, there is some cost to the lines because they usually must borrow the money from banks, which charge premium interest rates on such high-risk loans. One company is in financial difficulty because of ransom payments. Southern Airways gave $2,000,000 in November to Havana-bound hijackers, and the cash has been confiscated by Fidel Castro's government. Southern officials will not comment on how seriously they will be hurt if the money is not given back, but the line's balance sheet provides a clue. As of June 30, the carrier, which has not earned a profit in five years, had only $3,000,000 cash on hand.

Passengers themselves will probably wind up paying most of the cost of increased protection. Though federal authorities will not say how large a fare increase they might approve, FAA officials estimate that a boost averaging $1 a ticket would raise $180 million of the money needed. The airlines figure that they would then have to dig into their depleted coffers for yet another $120 million a year.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.