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Security regulations gone wild: US's bizarre requirement to 'rescreen' Canadian bags

April 21, 2008----It's an overlooked issue that gets little attention, but one that demonstrates how excessive regulatory requirements can cause tremendous hassles for airlines, airports and passengers: Why does a checked bag screened in Vancouver or Toronto have to be rescreened before being placed aboard a connecting flight in Minneapolis or Chicago?

Canada and the US have as amicable a coexistence as two neighboring countries could possibly have. Transborder flights have been common since 1949 with northern US hubs and Canada's major cities closely intertwined; it is indeed difficult to consider the air transport markets in the two nations as separate. But since 2003, US regulators have been bedeviled by a clause in aviation security legislation passed in 2001 that requires checked bags on "flights and flight segments originating in the US" to be screened "before boarding and [screening] shall be carried out by a federal employee."

The US Transportation Security Administration has been unable to figure out how to reconcile this language with allowing bags screened at major Canadian airports to be considered screened for US domestic flights. This holds even when the passenger and his checked luggage are remaining aboard the same aircraft that arrived at the US airport to continue on to another US city. The requirement appears even more bizarre when one considers that passengers coming from eight "pre-approved" Canadian airports--from which the vast majority of transborder flights emanate--do not have to go through the security process again before boarding a US connecting flight. At those airports, US Customs and Border Protection officers inspect both passengers and bags headed to US airports.

Nearly 6 million bags annually coming into the US on transborder flights from Canada have to be rescreened even though in many cases the bags were screened by top-flight equipment at major Canadian airports just a couple of hours previously and also were examined by US CBP. Airports Council International-North America estimates that as many as 100,000 of those bags are misplaced annually and "conservatively" pegs the figure TSA and airlines spend each year in additional labor costs to meet the requirement at $10 million.

Rescreening "resources could be used for other activities," ACI-NA Senior VP-Security and Facilitation Charles Chambers tells ATWOnline. "We certainly know what the operational effects are. If we can work out the security issues, there are clearly operational benefits."

No US airport is more affected than Minneapolis-St. Paul International, at which 1,000 checked bags arrive daily from Canada belonging to passengers going on to another US destination. "It adds a doubling of time involved in aircraft turnaround and doubles misconnected bags," MSP Deputy Executive Director-Operations Tim Anderson tells this website. "You've got to have a number of people schlepping those bags from the aircraft to the [explosive detection system] machine and back again. It's a manpower issue, an efficiency issue and for the airline a customer service issue because more bags are misconnected."

A joint ACI-NA/Canadian Airports Council report prepared last year by InterVISTAS stated that the rescreening requirements "constrict the passenger without adding immeasurably to security. . .The impact of rescreening has wide ranging implications throughout the North American aviation system. . .With increasing fuel costs and already thin profit margins, devoting additional labor resources to the rescreening process impacts the airlines' already eroding bottom lines."

One issue frustrating US airlines and airports is that EDS systems, particularly "in-line" systems, are designed to handle bags checked at ticket counters, meaning that the Canadian bags either have to be brought all the way back to the booking area or a separate screening system has to be set up. MSP Director Steve Wareham has noted that the airport invested $50 million on an in-line EDS system but still had to "build a separate system to handle Canadian bags which have already been screened."

When contacted by ATWOnline, a TSA spokesperson simply stated, "We have to fulfill the requirements of the law," and declined further comment. Anderson says he recently attended a meeting in Washington with TSA and Canadian Air Transport Security Authority officials and was told that the issue could be resolved in the next 4-6 months. "It's really between TSA and CATSA folks to find a solution," he said. "I was told it was realistic [to end the rescreening in 4-6 months] by folks closest to this issue at TSA."--Aaron Karp

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