Davis: Bag check deadline looms

CNN correspondent Patty Davis

(CNN) -- A new agency charged with increasing airport security is supposed to have federal screeners in place by mid-November to ensure that all bags on commercial flights are screened before take off. But a California-based think tank doesn't think it is possible. CNN correspondent Patty Davis discussed the deadline from Reagan National Airport in Washington.

PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, Patty.

DAVIS: Well, in fact, the government does say that it will meet that deadline. It is vowing to meet that deadline. It is the Reason Foundation, a Los Angeles based think tank, that is saying that the federal government will be hard pressed to meet that December 31 deadline to screen all checked bags.

The Transportation Security Administration, the agency responsible for passenger security or airport security, airline security, making sure those deadlines are met, is using bomb detection machines, those EDS machines. They're the big bulky ones that you see in the airports. They're also going to use trace detection machines. That's a swab going over your luggage, checking for expensive residue. That's how they plan to meet the deadline.

But the study by the Reason Foundation says getting all those machines in place in time will not be easy.

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ROBERT POOLE: Reason Foundation: Thousands of new machines that take up a lot of room requires a lot more space than is available in most airport terminals. And so this means multi-million, sometimes hundred million construction projects at many of the major airports. And there simply isn't time to do a project of that size between now and December 31.

And that end of the year period between Christmas and New Year's is one of the peak travel times. And so if you have terminals all torn up, we're asking for chaos right at the peak of the holiday travel season.

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DAVIS: The Reason Foundation says that those bags are just, those screening machines are just too slow to get the job done and get all those people processed, the magnitude of numbers of bags that will need to be processed at that end of the year deadline.

Another problem, the Reason Foundation questions whether there could be enough federal screeners in place. You recall that the TSA says it's going to hire some 50,000 screeners. Only a few thousand hired so far and in place. They say they're going to hire some 4,000 to 5,000 a week from here on out. Now, that deadline is November 19. The Reason Foundation questioning whether the TSA can actually pull that off.

Now, how to fix this problem, how to get there, the Reason Foundation is saying delay the deadline, delay the deadline for two years until December of 2004. Make that deadline further down and perhaps we can meet it with some new technology and then we'll, by that time, have all those screeners in place