Updated airline news: more stranded passengers and routine TSA gaffes

Another routine week for the airlines: passengers stranded on a plane for seven hours, and the government in a decade has not bothered to assess security at non-US airports. And yes, don’t forget the investigative report that those pesky body scanners may not be safe, after all.

For a long time, a medical consensus was that humans should only be X-rayed in the chance of getting a medical benefit. But the TSA, despite skeptics, has repeatedly claimed their X-ray machines for security are safe. But now everyone wonders.

“The United States has begun marching millions of airline passengers through the X-ray body scanners, parting ways with countries in Europe and elsewhere that have concluded that such widespread use of even low-level radiation poses an unacceptable health risk,” a ProPublica/PBS NewsHour investigation concluded.

The government is rolling out the X-ray scanners despite having a safer alternative. The Transportation Security Administration says it has an alternative method that is highly effective.

The newspaper investigation cited research that suggests that anywhere from six to 100 U.S. airline passengers each year could get cancer from the machines.

The TSA has repeatedly defended the scanners as “safe.” But they are glossing over the accepted scientific view that even low doses of ionizing radiation increase the risk of cancer.

“Even though it’s a very small risk, when you expose that number of people, there’s a potential for some of them to get cancer,” Kathleen Kaufman, the former radiation management director in Los Angeles County, said in the ProPublica story.

The investigation said that it showed that security issues were trumping “even long established medical science.”

And then there’s the tarmac delays. Again.

Travelers on at least four planes were stranded on the tarmac of an airport in Connecticut, some for more than seven hours last weekend, leaving some without food, water or working toilets.

Both JetBlue Airways and US regulators say they are investigating, but an early report by USA Today cited a lack of buses available to ferry passengers off the stranded planes as a major culprit.

"Airports should be ready, willing and able to get people off that airplane," Edwin Zimmerman, vice president of Cobus Industries, which sells buses to airports, told the newspaper.  "Unfortunately, I don't believe that there are any rules or requirements that the airports have that equipment in place."

The problems occurred after a freak October storm dumped up to 30 inches of snow in some parts of New England.

A delay longer than three hours can lead to a US government fine. That rule was prompted in part by a notorious incident involving a JetBlue flight stranded at New York's JFK airport during an ice storm on Valentine's Day four years ago.

Adding insult to injury, there were no provisions for hotels so many stranded passengers had to sleep at the airport.

In more disturbing airline security news, the US Transportation Security Administration lacks any criteria for determining which airports outside the US have the greatest security risks.

Fifty-five TSA employees inspected airports and airlines outside the US last year to check for compliance with international security standards, Greg Soule, a TSA spokesman, said in an e-mail to Bloomberg News.

Those employees found “serious noncompliance issues at a number of airports,” according to the Government Accounting Office (GAO) report.  

“TSA has not yet taken steps to evaluate its assessment results to identify regional and other trends over time,” the report said. “The agency has not developed criteria and guidance for determining foreign airport vulnerability ratings.”

Guidelines aimed at providing “more long-term consistency” in assessing non-U.S. airports are now in place, Jim H. Crumpacker, the TSA’s liaison to the GAO, wrote in response to the report.

By David Wilkening