I just read a disheartening story about the Haitian relief efforts. With thousands of Haitians and other citizens crowding around the Port au Prince airport, relief plans are returning back to the U.S. and other destinations with hundreds of empty seats, because there are no metal scanners and security programs in place to process these earthquake victims.
In effect, our terrorism phobia is preventing airplanes from ferrying out many of those who need to get out of the earthquake-ravaged country. Amazingly, our own United States authorities are the common-sense-challenged jerks enforcing this policy.
Though Spirit, American and other major airlines have used passenger planes to fly cargo into Port-au-Prince since the quake, the planes almost always return to the States with hundreds of empty seats, airline spokesmen said.
After the quake, U.S. authorities banned commercial air travel from the Port-au-Prince airport, citing the airport’s inability to clear passengers for flights. That screening includes putting passengers through metal detectors and checking them against federal terrorist-watch lists.
This insanity seems to be continuing. Similar reports have been filed by the London Times.
A week after the earthquake, there are still few escape routes out of the country. Commercial airlines have been flying out with thousands of empty seats after US authorities barred them from filling up with earthquake survivors.
Carriers including American Airlines and Spirit Air, which have been airlifting relief supplies into Port-au-Prince from Florida, have been told by US troops controlling the airport that they must fly back to the US empty because of a lack of security screening facilities for departing passengers.
A Foreign Policy blogger agrees with me. There must be a better way. Common sense must see the light of day.
I understand that security rules can’t be compeltely thrown out in the event of a crisis, but surely some workaround could have been found. Couldn’t passengers have been patted down in Port-au-Prince rather than put through a metal detector? Couldn’t they have been checked against the watchlist after arriving at their destination? In any event, I’m sure all involved would be willing to assume a slightly higher level of hijack risk given the circumstances.
Sadly, the State Department and Homeland Security still are sticking to their mandate that we need full screening against terrorist watchlists and metal detectors for anyone to get out of Haiti on a commercial flight. So, even with thousands of empty seats departing Haiti, passengers are not being flown out of the crippled country unless they are orphans it seems.
Photo: U.S. Military
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
