50 Cleared for Takeoff

James Loy, head of the Transportation Security Administration, says that he can safeguard the airlines and their passengers, now that Congress has said he can unpack.

January 09, 2003 — CSO — Judging by the number of cardboard boxes in Adm. James Loy's office at the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) last autumn, Loy might have just finished packing or been just about to unpack. The truth is, from July to November, he was in a holding pattern. His office, in Washington, D.C., was temporaryand not just because it was hastily constructed from prefab walls after the post-9/11 flurry of legislation to Fix Things.

Loy was waiting for official word from Congress that would allow him to drop the "acting" from his title of undersecretary of transportation for security. Only when his confirmation came through, right before Thanksgiving, could he unpack the boxes in an empty office across the hall that has real walls. Even then, no one knew how long he'd last in the office vacated by John Magaw, who was ousted seven months after being brought in to help build TSA from scratch.

Magaw left in July, ostensibly for health reasons, but really because Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta thought the former Secret Service head didn't play well with politicians or the airline industry. "Magaw wasn't the right guy for the job, and that's putting it nicely," says Billie Vincent, former director of security for the Federal Aviation Administration turned consultant. "Is Loy the right guy? We don't know yet."

What CSO-types in the airline industry do know now is that TSA is listening to them. Loy's staff meets regularly with officials from the major airlines about how to prevent another 9/11 without crippling an industry that, according to the Air Transport Association of America, lost more than $7 billion in 2002.

Loy's work thus far has had mixed results. Even as he was celebrating the fact that his organization met its deadline to replace private security guards at airport checkpoints with 45,000 better-trained federal ones, he had to face the fact that about 30 of the nation's busiest airports would not have permanent systems in place to screen all checked baggage for explosives.

Nowhere is the age-old struggle between convenience and security more pronounced than in the battle to secure the nation's skies. Loy, who retired as commandant of the Coast Guard the same day he was tapped for TSA, seems older and wiser than his 60 years. But he's still optimistic that he can strike the balance necessary to keep the nation's air travelersand the industry that serves themboth safe and satisfied.

CSO Senior Writer Sarah D. Scalet recently spoke with Loy about that challenge.CSO: I used to go to a copy shop with a sign that said, "Fast, cheap and goodpick two." It seems a little like the trade-off for airline security: convenience at the gate versus cost versus good security. How do you achieve a balance?James Loy: If you think about the post-9/11 security world that we're living in, we're attempting to come to grips with what I've termed the "new normalcy." We've been living under the yellow Homeland Security alert level for months now. [Mineta's] challenge in the face of that new normalcy is to achieve world-class customer security and world-class customer service. It is a balance of two, at least for the moment, equally weighted goals.