Airline security measures considered

LOS ANGELES -- For a nation shattered by an airborne apocalypse, no idea for boosting safety in the skies may seem too expensive or too far-fetched.

Computers that match the faces of airline passengers against databases of known terrorists? Fingerprint readers to secure cockpits? Planes that can be wrested from the control of hijackers and landed safely by pilots stationed on the ground?

The disaster will spark a wholesale review of airline security, aviation experts say. Potential solutions could be as simple as saturating flights with armed sky marshals -- or as complex as technology that identifies passengers by the whorls of their fingerprints.

"One of the small benefits from huge disasters is a rethinking of where we are, and we must do that," said Tsahi Gozani, president and chief executive officer of Ancore Inc., a Santa Clara-based maker of advanced bomb-detection equipment. "We must leap forward."

Safety experts predict advanced technologies, some of which exist now only in concept, will play an increased role.

"It's conceivable that the next generation of airplanes may be able to have some feature where in the event of a catastrophic incapacitation of pilots ... maybe there's a way for the aircraft to lock up its cockpit and turn over to some kind of ground-based control," said James Coyne, president of the National Air Transportation Association in Alexandria, Va.

Fingerprint readers

Grant Evans, executive vice president of Identix Inc., said fingerprint readers made by his Los Gatos, Calif., company could confirm the identity of passengers and keep cockpits locked to all intruders.

"One of the things you can avoid is plane hijacking, by knowing who's on the plane," Evans said. "The technology's been there. There just hasn't been the cause."

Some believe the attacks will prompt the use of biometric systems that scan faces of passengers in a digital hunt for possible terrorists.

Luggage scanners, like those being developed by Ancore, can measure the chemical composition of a bag's contents, sniffing out weapons and bombs. The U.S. Department of Energy is developing a holographic scanner that can image a passenger in three dimensions to reveal any hidden weapons.

The scanner uses wavelengths similar to radar or satellite signals, but not X-rays, to illuminate a person. The signals are then read by multiple detectors before being fed to a computer, which produces a 3D image of the person's unclothed body. To address privacy concerns, researchers program the computer to see only objects.

Others propose radically boosting the number of armed Federal Aviation Administration sky marshals (the current number is not publicly divulged but is believed relatively small) or adding armored cockpit doors.

Airlines could ban carry-on luggage or force passengers to place it in overhead bins that lock.

Computer-assisted passenger profiling also could be stepped up.