Summary

After the explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988, Congress focused its attention on increasing aviation security, which culminated in the passage of the Aviation Security Improvement Act of 1990. The still unexplained crash of TWA Flight 800 in 1996 spurred the federal government to further strengthen aviation security. This report provides information on (1) the status of the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) efforts to implement section 301 of the Federal Aviation Reauthorization Act and (2) the status of FAA's efforts to implement section 302 and factors that could impede such implementation. FAA issued the report required by section 301 in January 1999, two years after the deadline set by law. FAA's report concluded that there should be no change to the current system of shared aviation security responsibilities among FAA, the air carriers, and the airport operators or to the current funding sources for aviation security.

GAO noted that: (1) FAA issued the report required by section 301 of the Reauthorization Act on January 5 1999, about 2 years after the date mandated in the act; (2) the report concludes that there should be no change to the current system of shared aviation security responsibilities among FAA, the air carriers, and the airport operators or to the current funding sources for aviation security; (3) FAA's conclusions are based on the lack of any consensus in the civil aviation community for changes; (4) to comply with the requirements of section 302, FAA is developing a proposed regulation, which would require the certification of screening companies; (5) the proposed regulation would require screening companies and air carriers to comply with uniform performance standards for screeners and implement FAA-approved training and testing programs for screeners; (6) a critical step in the certification of screening companies is having a reliable and consistent way to measure the screening companies' performance; (7) in January 1999, FAA, after several delays, validated that its automated screener testing system is an accurate measurement of screener's performance; (8) over the next several months, FAA will gather additional data for use in developing performance standards for screeners; (9) the agency plans to issue a final regulation in late 2000; (10) the aviation industry generally agrees that national standards for security-screening operations are needed; (11) several issues could impede the issuance of the final regulation; and (12) for example, the completion of FAA's validation process had been delayed several times and any further delays with completing FAA's current efforts could affect the issuance of the final regulation.