Logan Reopens, Security Tightened

Wendell Wettstein and his wife Patricia dragged their luggage to Logan International Airport yesterday to complete the last leg of a month-long cross-country trip from their home in California to a Grand Cayman island cruise.

The middle-aged couple arrived at the airport wearing matching T-shirts emblazoned with an American flag and the red, white and blue words, “United States of America: Land of The Free.”

Logan Airport’s Terminal B, where the Wettsteins patiently wait to check their bags, was the departure site for the two passenger jets that were hijacked by terrorists and used to destroy the World Trade Center’s twin towers Tuesday.

Despite the concerns of family members back in the Southern California desert, the Wettsteins say they are determined not to allow fear to change their plans.

“We shouldn’t allow these guys to paralyze the country,” Wendell says. “If the whole country shuts down, well, then they’ve won.”

As the couple packed their bags yesterday morning, Patricia turned to her husband to ask if they had forgotten anything. Wendell’s response? “I think we’ve lost our innocence.”

After grounding all flights for four days following Tuesday’s horrific terrorist attacks, Logan Airport reopened Saturday at 5 a.m. to armed black-clad state troopers, bomb-sniffing dogs, no curbside check-ins, no knives in airport restaurants and passengers like the Wettsteins who tried to ignore concern with a quiet, dogged determination to continue on with their lives.

But the skies over Logan still remained relatively quiet this weekend. The airport flew just under 50 percent of its normal operations yesterday, Mass. Port Authority officials said.

And despite the more stringent security measures, some regard the requirements as too little, too late—superficial changes that will not ultimately be effective.

“This whole thing is short-lived,” says Jim Hutchigs, who works at Anthony’s Pier 4, a small store that advertises live Maine lobsters for tourists next to the American Airlines Terminal B security gate. He gestures to the airline employees in front of the security gate. “How long is this going to last?”

The New Measures

The security measures currently in place at Logan go beyond the dozen Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requirements announced last Wednesday. According to a press release issued this weekend, Logan’s initiatives are the recommendations of a task force of representatives from Massport, the Mass. State Police, the FBI, the FAA, the U.S. Marshal’s Office and the U.S. Secret Service.

The directives include random checks of carry-on luggage by state police, K-9 patrols of airport roadways, cargo areas and ticket counters and state police and federal agents stationed at security checkpoints throughout the airport.

The difference was visible at the American Airlines Terminal B.

Outside, the terminal is quiet—the garage is closed indefinitely and curbside check-ins are no longer allowed.

Inside the airport, a state trooper dressed completely in black—long-sleeved shirt, pants, holster and combat boots—stands in line at Dunkin Donuts, while a woman with a “U.S. Marshals” jacket walked briskly past.

At about 10:00 a.m., the line to check baggage is about a 100 yards long. Each passenger’s bag is subject to an x-ray in a newly-purchased $50,000 machine before it can be checked.

And in front of the security gate, a sign reads “Attention: beyond security checkpoint all persons may be subject to random searches, ID verification and ticket verification.”

As passengers walk through, they juggle baggage, tickets and photo ID.

Although the lines are long, passengers say they are comforted, rather than frustrated, by the highly visible security.

A group of four Boston residents waiting for a flight to San Jose for a friend’s honeymoon chat about the bomb-sniffing dog that passed by a few minutes before.

“The dog’s already passed by three times,” says Michelle Parks, who looks relaxed as she sips an iced coffee. Her group of 30 friends arrived early for the flight and Parks has been waiting for an hour and a half.

“It’s like the SWAT team or something,” she says. “I like it.”

For Mary Murphy, an elderly woman traveling home yesterday to Brisbane, Australia, the visible security is particularly comforting as she is reminded of how close she came last week to tragedy.

Murphy, who speaks in a soft Australian accent, says she had originally planned to fly from Boston to Los Angeles early Wednesday morning and then take a connecting flight home to Australia. The two flights that were hijacked from Logan and crashed into the World Trade Center Tuesday were scheduled to arrive in L.A.

“I could have been in that plane,” Murphy says as she stands in the separate line for passengers preparing to board international flights. “My travel agent just goes on the computer and picks my flights. I would have agreed to anything. It’s just dreadful. It gives you goosebumps.”

The security is heartening, she says.

“I’m not worried, really,” Murphy says. “I just hope for the best.”

The Scapegoat?

But Hutchigs, who has watched countless passengers pass through the security gate in his months behind the Pier 4 counter, says he believes the security measures should have been implemented years before, after the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

“The time was then. It’s a little late,” Hutchigs says. “I think this could have been avoided.”

But it’s not so simple, says a former FAA security official familiar with national aviation programs.

The official says he believes the FAA has been blamed unfairly for Tuesday’s attacks—the security measures were never aimed to protect against the sort of strikes that killed and injured thousands last week. He says he does not believe there was any sort of security breach.

“Those blades were permitted. It isn’t that they weren’t detected,” he says.

Just as small blades could be used as weapons, he mentions that wine bottles could be a similar source of danger and have been used in a hijacking.

“Are we going to do away with those as well?” he asks.

“The [security procedures] weren’t to deal with this extraordinary thing, where you had people who were not only suicidal, they were suicidal pilots. The regulations and the security programs did not foresee this,” he says.

“There was no failure of anything that is in regulation, including anything that was in the emergency regulations, or in any regulations that were forthcoming on Sept. 10,” he continues.

It is difficult, he says, to strike a balance between a need for security and simple, pragmatic concerns.

“If you have long lines as a steady state of affairs, the people performing the security functions at the counters are overwhelmed, and security is adversely affected,” he says.

Similarly, he says, some passengers dissatisfied with today’s security measures have suggested armed guards accompany every flight—one of many precautions employed by El Al, Israel’s national airline carrier, long known for its tough security measures.

“It’s certainly an idea that needs to be considered. All ideas should be on the table. They need to be sifted out and the practicable and effective ones should be implemented,” he says. “An air marshal could probably cover several flights a day, but you’d need to have more than one, because if one of the terrorists starts doing something, and the marshal goes over, he’d be promptly attacked in the back by terrorist number two.”

While airline officials reassess newly implemented policies and struggle to strike this balance, however, the passengers are already beginning to get on with their plans.

When Hutchigs came to the airport to sell his fresh lobster on Saturday, he said passengers seemed frightened.

“Today, it’s a little changed. There’s less apprehension on people’s faces,” he said yesterday. “It’s a little calmer. They want to go on with their journey.”

—Crimson staff writer Daniela J. Lamas can be reached at lamas@fas.harvard.edu.