Remarks by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff at the National Air Transportation Association 2007 Annual Business Roundtable

Release Date: November 5, 2007

Washington, DC

Mr. Coyne:  Mr. Secretary, let me first thank you and continue to extend the hand of partnership to Homeland Security officials, especially Kip Hawley over at TSA, who we have found to be without doubt the most effective communicator to our industry of the issues. We’ve had a good working relationship with his entire staff, and they should all be commended on our part.

But as you can imagine, we continue to have questions about what’s going to happen tomorrow. And, of course, one of the things that anybody in business likes to know as they’re making their plans for next year, what’s going to be added to the TSA requirements that we’re going to have to deal with.

Part of that, of course, is your illusions to changes in the expansion to the Twelve-Five program to include non-charter aircraft. But could you just comment on how the program, from your perspective, has worked for the charter community? I mean, this is something that we at NATA—very soon after the creation of TSA—worked at the creation of this initial Twelve-Five program. What is your view of how that has worked within the charter community? And based upon the successes that we feel that we’ve achieved, do you think it can be transitioned to other aircraft easily and without a lot of difficulty?

Secretary Chertoff:  I think it’s worked, as far as I can tell, exceptionally well. Of course, the most important metric is that we have not had anybody use a charter aircraft to carry out an attack, which is, at the end of the day, from my standpoint, the ultimate measure of success.

My understanding, though, that—is that the charter community has accommodated to it quite efficiently, and it leads me to believe that, again, as we move this into a domain of non-charter general aviation, there’s no reason it shouldn’t work, as well.

I know there’s a lot of back-and-forth and close communications, we monitor the implementation of these programs and as we monitor the expansion of these programs. And that’s why I’m optimistic that with the continued cooperation of this group and the people you represent, we can continue to move the security levels to a higher state, but without unintentionally compromising your ability to do what you need to do, which is move people around.

Mr. Coyne:  Well, in that regard, if there’s any area, frankly, that we have hoped that by now there would be a better solution, it’s in the area of badging of our employees on the ground at airports. And I know it’s been a difficult issue for TSA and Homeland Security. Many times they have gone to Congress with efforts to bring standardization to the national security badging world with proposals like TWIC and Trusted Travelers and others. And it seems like each time some common-sense proposal is advanced to make a more unified or standardized capability nationwide, there’s a setback, or there’s some delay.

We in the airport community—many of the people in this room today, for example, have pilots or employees who might need to go to many, many different airports in the course of a typical month. And for them to be bedecked with literally dozens of different airport badges, all with different technologies and so forth, it’s just a missed opportunity for the federal government to come in and standardize this. When do you see us providing—see more relief in this area?

Secretary Chertoff:  Well, we are, of course, moving forward in TWIC. We’re beginning to distribute it in a couple of the ports, and we intend to continue to roll it out. I should point out that my understanding is that at least some of this issue relates to the airport owners themselves, of course, because the ultimate—the deployment of new reader technology, as that gets underway, is going to be something which is going to obviously have—they’re going to play a major role in.

Let me tell you the vision of where we want to go. We did have a delay in rolling TWIC out because there was a contractor issue, and we corrected that and changed the contractor. We also want to make sure that deployment works in the real world. But at the end of the day, I do think we want to have a single card, interoperable, that is supported by a background check, and that with the cooperation of the airports, will allow them to put into place security checkpoints so that we have fewer different kinds of badges and allow more easy interchangeability of badging.

I should also say, another issue that we are, frankly, always in debate about is, to what extent there ought to be individual hand-screening of—or searching of people who come into the back part of the airport. Some argue that everybody ought to go through the same kind of regimen that you do when you’re a passenger. We continue to believe that the badging properly done is the best solution. But we do—and we have introduced some random screening for employees and other official personnel who come through as, again, another level of defense, because of the fact that the more layers of defense we have, the easier it is for us to guard against failure.

Mr. Coyne:  Well, we’ve had some success at several airports. NATA is working at Farmingdale with TSA on a model program to provide a uniform badging system for employees and aircraft operators and others. And I agree with you, the effort to get—you have to get the airport operation officials and the community of businesses and aircraft operators working together, because if you get a different—you know, it’s very easy for them to start fighting one another, and not having a positive outcome.

But I’d like very much, if I could, now to turn the questions over to the audience. We might have several people that have some specific questions that relate to their own security challenges. We have representatives here from the fractional aircraft industry. We have representatives from the charter aircraft industry. We have representatives from FBO—fuel sales and providers, avionics providers, a variety of leaders in the industry. And I’d hope that some of you might have some questions for the Secretary.

I see—Ed, sure, please. Ed Bolen, the President of NBAA.

Question: Hi, Mr. Secretary. Well, I appreciated your remarks and I appreciate you taking the time to be with our community today and articulating for us your concerns and acknowledging the efforts that we’re making to try to work together to enhance the security for our nation. I do, however, want to reiterate a point that I think that we consistently raise with the TSA and DHS at every opportunity, and that is, as we do work so closely together to promote security and mobility in the United States, to ask you to be sensitive to our desire to see that increased security and the increased understanding of our community be reflected in greater access to airports and airspace.

And the frustrations that we have had both at Reagan National Airport and with other TFRs, as we continue to work with you and you understand just how committed to security this group is and our safety and security footprint, that that can be reflected with perhaps equivalent access to the commercial operations.

Mr. Coyne:  I’d like to just follow up on that excellent question because, for example, the charter community, which has for many years now met the requirements of the Twelve-Five rule, and from the very earliest days—and as you’ve acknowledged, it has been a success—from the very earliest days of our negotiations with TSA about the Twelve-Five rule, we said, if we do all of this and have done it successfully, we should be allowed to fly into any airport in the nation that any commercial airliner is allowed to fly into. And yet we still have the situation where a perfectly safe, perfectly secure, perfectly vetted, 12,500 pound-plus charter aircraft is not allowed to take off or land at an airport if a TFR has been set around that airport. Maybe there’s a football game adjacent to the airport for some reason, and yet any old Part 121 airliner is allowed to come in, with no extra security other than what they normally do. And it should be, if we’re doing this we should get the same access.

Secretary Chertoff:  Well, I mean, certainly an issue we can look at. I mean, obviously when you get a special security event, for example, or an inauguration—and, of course, Reagan National is a particularly sensitive circumstance, for obvious reasons—there is some concern about even raising the level of security further. I’m not going to jump TSA on this issue, but I’m sure they’re going to continue to monitor as we get the security measures out to see whether they can establish a confidence level that would allow some greater flexibility.

Reagan National, of course, early on in my tenure I think we relaxed the rules somewhat with respect to general aviation coming into Reagan National—and not without some controversy, I might add. There are people on the other side who are still very nervous about this concept, but I think it’s something we ought to keep on working together.

Mr. Coyne:  Well, my question wasn’t only Reagan National. I mean, it could be any TFR at any airport into the country. And it’s very frustrating for a high-value aircraft owner chartering an airplane, because he wants to leave at 12:30 p.m. precisely, and he gets there at 12:15 p.m. and he finds that a TFR has been imposed in the last 12 hours and he can’t take off. And yet he sees—this could be at any city in the country, and he sees an airliner taking off. He says, how is it that that airliner can take off and I can’t, and yet I’ve gone through all of the requirements of the security that TSA has? And I—and he’s prepared to do even more, and yet he can’t depart from that airport. So it’s very frustrating for our community.

Some other questions that we might have?

Question: Yes, sir. We appreciate you coming, but what Jim and Ed have been talking about really comes into bearing with the presidential campaign. We have roving TFRs, and worst case it happened last campaign was, I think, the last day of NBAA. We had both candidates in. It shut down every airplane that came into that whole organization. But the main thing is that there’s got to be some way to let—whether it’s charter, corporate, or what not—come in during a TFR. There’s got to be a fix to that. Otherwise—you take the FBO side, like my side—I have no business for that period. Can’t have—nobody comes in or out.

On the other side, we shut down commerce where the people can’t do business that’s set up accordingly before because the TFR just pops up. I mean, it is a major operational change in our economy and in our way of operations here. We’d sure like to see you all try to address that, whether it be we go through a set deal—there just needs to be a procedure that we can do it if we need to go in; if we don’t, fine. But at least give us the opportunity to operate during those times. Thank you.

Mr. Coyne:  I’ll give you a specific example. Four years ago when the Vice President was having his debate against Senator Edwards in Cleveland, the Vice President called me up and invited me to come be one of the guests at the debate. And I was honored to go, and I decided to fly myself. And I filed a flight plan to Burke—the Lakefront Airport in Cleveland, which was within the TFR of where the debate was. So I called up the FAA and said, was there any way to get a clearance? And they said, oh, well, no, the TFR is not going to apply to you. And I called up the Secret Service—oh, yes, the TFR applies to you; you won’t come in. So I had two agencies telling me the exact opposite things about going in.

And this is exactly what happens in the real world out here. The community has gotten—it gets a lot of confusion, a lot of disagreement. Fortunately, I was able to get in and root for the Vice President at the debate, so you certainly need all the people out there helping on these campaigns as we go forward. We’d like your help on that.

Secretary Chertoff: Well, generally, I always take the view of Secret Service on this. I hear what you’re saying. I think we’re going to have to continue to talk about—I’m sure TSA will continue to evaluate the balance here. I’m not going to be able to tell you here that you—I’m going to necessarily concede to this, but we look forward to continuing to work with you on this issue.

Mr. Coyne:  And, frankly, we’ve had good discussions with the folks over at TSA on that. And our hope is that as you go forward with the expansion of the Twelve-Five plan, we get that long sought after benefit of access into the airspace that the airlines have, and perhaps even into National Airport.

I’m sure that some gentlemen in the press, ladies of the press who are here might have some questions as well for the Secretary. I’d like to turn it open to some of them. I knew David would be the first one. How did I know that? David—with The Weekly of Business Aviation.

Question: Mr. Secretary, in your remarks you indicated this idea of pushing the security checks overseas, before people come over. Are you talking about making people fly through specific airports to get security—security portals?

Secretary Chertoff:  I don’t think we’ve fully determined what the right answer is. But I think that—I mean, ultimately, at a broad level of generality, the concept is that people have to be screened at some point coming into the U.S. The model now, generally—again, I’m talking about just intercontinental flights, not from Canada or Mexico—if you’re flying across the Atlantic or the Pacific, you’re going to be required to go to a particular airport, for example, in order to be screened there.

I think the thought would be to move as much of that as we could, with the cooperation of our partners, overseas. And it might be that under some model, you would stop at an intermediate place, get your screening done there, including your customs screening, and then fly directly to wherever you wanted to go in the United States. So that net-net it’s not going to require an additional stop, but it will mean that that gateway stop takes place overseas as opposed to here in the United States.

So I mean, I think at the end of the day the fundamental problem is this—and I’m going to be probably—I  was going to say "uncharacteristically," but maybe "characteristically" is more accurate—characteristically blunt about it. What are we most worried about? We’re worried about—we spend a huge amount of money and time worrying about people putting a nuclear bomb in a container and bringing it to the United States on a ship, or putting a bomb or getting a hold of an airplane and hijacking it and turning it into a weapon.

I had a senior official of a private air company approach me earlier this year and say to me—and I won’t give him up—that he worries—he doesn’t know who gets on his planes, he doesn’t know what their background is. So to the extent that we run the risk that someone getting on a flight on the other side of the Atlantic or Pacific is going to put a nuclear device on a plane and then use that to become a flying bomb, obviously the way to correct that is to do as much of the screening of the people and the scanning of the plane overseas. And it’s just a question of building with the air traffic model in a way that actually net-net doesn’t result in greater inconvenience, because if we do all the screening overseas, then you don’t have to do it when you come to the U.S. Instead of maybe stopping at a screening airport in the U.S., you can fly directly to your ultimate destination. So hopefully it can be done in a way that would net it out in the end, as far as inconvenience is concerned.

Mr. Coyne:  Good point. I’d like just to follow—and I’m sure that this is obvious to everyone—but the benefit of air transportation, especially our segment of aviation, is that it saves time for the people who are spending thousands and thousands of dollars an hour to use private aviation. When they’re required to do something that adds a significant amount of time to their travel, then they no longer are able or want to use the mode of transportation that we have.

Lots of times flying to a destination in the middle of the country isn’t a possibility because of range limitations of the aircraft—they’re going to have to stop in a portal airport anyways. So to ask them to have another stop somewhere overseas, when, in fact, most of all the information can be developed in a way that does not add time to their flight agenda, we would hope would be the preferable way to go.

And just as you’ve worked with us in the past—and now we find this really commendable at TSA—they are aware, very much aware of both risk management—effective risk management and prioritization, and also trying to impose security protocols that do not destroy the value of the transportation mode that we’re starting with.

Secretary Chertoff:  And that’s pretty much what I’ve said. I mean, there’s a—we’re not interested in shutting down general aviation. We think it’s important to have a system in place that works with and promotes the growth of general aviation. It may be—and I don’t want to start to speculate about rules that haven’t been written yet—it may be that you can take some hay off the haystack, there may be some regular travelers that you can deal with in one way; there may be difference in the way you treat fractional jet or general aviation that are hired on a per-trip basis, as opposed to corporate jets, where you know who gets on the jet and who maintains custody of the jet.

So I mean, obviously, these are all issues that we have to discuss and work out. And we should only impose requirements that add real value. And to the extent, for example, we can eliminate a level of screening here by doing it overseas, that’s a good thing. But I do want to make it clear: I can’t turn my back on a very real threat that is out there, and I can’t—we can’t tell everybody else in the commercial domain and in the maritime domain, you have to assume the burden of security—but go to another domain and say, we’re not going to bother you.

So we’re going to have to work together to find a way to deal with what I believe is a very real—albeit not imminent—but still a very real threat, which is somebody using a general aviation jet flying across the ocean to smuggle in a dangerous weapon or something dangerous. We’re going to have to figure out how to address that threat in a way that’s consistent with the business model and the traffic model that you all use. And that’s why we’re working cooperatively so we can help to identify the lower-risk flights and deal with them in one way, and the higher-risk flights and deal with them in another way.

Mr. Coyne:  We have time for two more questions. I’m going to take the first one, if I may, because you raise the question, and one of my favorite metaphors is this haystack. Obviously, when so much of the hay that goes through our industry is safe hay, and we haven’t seen any dangerous needles in it yet, trying to identify the safe hay, if you will, ahead of time is so practical and intelligent.

In fact, we have proposed something of a version of the Registered Traveler or trusted traveler program within three weeks after 9/11 for our segment of the industry. And we felt that we would be an excellent beta test site for the TSA or Homeland Security to say, let’s start with some kind of trusted traveler in our community, where we really do have very, very trusted travelers, and give them the IDs and give them the biometrics and give them the methods so that they have to go through. And still, here we are, six years after the -- you know, and these trusted traveler methods are still stuck in the bureaucracy. Can we see some hope in the near future that this kind of—could we become a trusted traveler beta test site model for your industry?

Secretary Chertoff:  Again, we would have to look, I don’t know exactly where the process is. Registered Traveler, in general, has been—had a little bit of an uncertain path, partly because the expectations that people have for it sometimes vary widely.

Registered Traveler is designed to help resolve the issue of identity, to tell us if somebody is not someone that we view as a threat, based on our existing state of knowledge, which is not perfect. But even for Registered Traveler, we still do, for example, baggage screening. If you’re a Registered Traveler, you still have to go through the magnetometer, and you still have to have your bags that are checked go through a radiation or explosive detection machine, because there are different layers of security, and because we can’t, frankly, always be a hundred percent sure that a person unknown to us as a terrorist is not going to get on a plane with something dangerous. So we can’t rely exclusively on identity.

I don’t know exactly where Registered Traveler is with general aviation. I think that we will—obviously to the extent that you have a company that owns a plane and screens and vets and stands behind the people who travel on the plane, that is an easier circumstance than a business which takes people who lease planes, or have fractional ownership in planes, or where you have charters where people come in and join the charter, and in that sense, they’re like passengers, you don’t know who they are. So, then, of course, you’d have to find a way to put all the charter people into a Registered Traveler program.

So I will tell you, Jim, it’s not for want of an interest in doing this, because I know Kip is very interested in taking it off the haystack. It is often the case, though, that from the perspective of TSA, as you’re looking at the whole range of challenges, we’ve got to try to figure out all the various permutations that are going to be presented, and make—put out a rule that’s going to address those various permutations.

And so, certainly with respect to this international program, I think that we’re going to look to see, are there differences in the way we treat entities or companies who own their own jets and are responsible and register all the people who travel on them, as opposed to those that are more fluid in terms of their passengers.

Mr. Coyne:  The point I was trying to make with regard to passengers, the Registered Traveler program for the entire airline world involves millions and millions of passengers. It’s a difficult thing to get your hands around, because what you’re trying to screen and affirm the identify of are these passengers, and hopefully find—declare that some regular passengers on airlines we know well enough and they’ve got a good ID so we don’t have to go through it.

The charter passengers are a much smaller segment. The entire population of charter passengers in the United States is probably under 200,000 people. We could even make it smaller than that by certain categorization. And it would be a nice way to begin an evaluation of identifying, can we find passengers on charter aircraft that we know, affirmatively, their identity, and thereby avoid some of the further headaches that might be down the road? And I think it’s a good place to think about having a beta test site of some kind.

Time for one last question.

Question: I have two very quick questions. One is, what do you know about this flight that left U.S. out of—Reagan, U.S. Airway, landed in Logan? Five of the crew had to be evacuated because of sickness. What do you know?

Secretary Chertoff:  I think you’ve accurately described what the current state of play is. I mean, I’m sure the authorities in Logan are going to be looking at it to see what the cause of the sickness is. I believe it may have been some kind of carbon monoxide reaction, but I don’t think that’s definitive yet.

Question: Okay, and the second part to that is, what do you want to say to travelers to assure them that their flights are going to be safe—I mean, I guess, at least today—if they had to swap planes—

Secretary Chertoff:  If you’re talking about an issue about a malfunction in the aircraft, you’re actually in the wrong department. That’s the Department of Transportation and the FAA. I can tell you, from a security standpoint, there’s nothing about the incident that occurred that suggests a security issue at this point. We constantly—as you probably know—there are always, from time to time, issues that arise in air travel. Sometimes they are equipment issues, sometimes they are security issues. It doesn’t affect the safety, integrity of the entire system because we do have layers of security in the system such that even if a question arises about what happens on an individual flight, we’re not required to bring the whole system down; the system continues to function and operate.

And that’s a great opportunity for me to plug why we do layered security; why for some—sometimes people say, well, if you could do, for example, a Registered Traveler, why would you need to have additional measures like a behavioral screening, and looking at the baggage, and looking at the carry-on? And the answer is precisely so that if there were some kind of a question that arose with one layer of security, we would be able to rely on several other layers as a way of making sure the system is still secure. And that means we’d be much more likely to keep the system running, so everybody else can continue about their way, as opposed to having to shut the system down.

I mean, a key part of our security strategy is resiliency. And resiliency means being able to deal with an anomaly or a problem that arises in a particular flight, and adjusting to make sure that it doesn’t compromise or impede the flow of the entire system.

Mr. Coyne:  Please all join me in a round of applause for the Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff. Great job. Thank you.

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