Delays expected with baggage screening rules

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- With airlines facing a federally mandated deadline this week to begin screening all checked baggage, one U.S. senator warned Sunday that doing so will mean longer delays at airports.

Airlines will have to "work through" the new screening process, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, told CNN's Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer. "All of this is going to be time-consuming," she said. "But I hope people will be patient and understand that we are trying to screen in some way every bag that goes on an airplane."

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The Aviation Security Act, passed by Congress in response to the September 11 attacks, requires that all checked baggage be screened beginning Friday.

Much of the work will have to be done by hand because airlines don't have enough explosives-detecting machines.

In the absence of higher-tech methods, more bomb-sniffing dogs will be put to work and bags will be matched against passenger manifests, Hutchison said.

The industry needs an estimated 2,200 machines, at a cost of about $1 million apiece, to screen the 1.3 billion pieces of luggage that are checked each year. Just 161 of the machines are in use at major airports.

Neither lawmakers nor industry officials believe there will be enough machines in place by Friday. "I think that deadline indicates to the Department of Transportation that Congress wanted this done really quickly, that the public wants it done really quickly," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York.

Meeting that demand is critical, he said. "People want security in their travel," he said. "That's the only thing that would bring travel up again."