DHS Running Late in Plans on Checking Passengers before Takeoff

WASHINGTON--The government is three months late in producing a plan ordered by Congress to avoid diverting international flights because of potentially problematic passengers.

Twice in the past week, Boston-bound planes from Europe were diverted from their destinations when a passenger's name was found to be similar to a name on the "no-fly list" of people considered threats to aviation.

An intelligence bill passed in December gave the Homeland Security Department until Feb. 15 to develop a plan to check passengers' names against the list before a plane's departure from a foreign airport.

"It doesn't seem like a mission impossible to require that we check all passengers against the terrorist watch list before a flight heads to the United States," said Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer of New York.

About 2,600 planes fly into the United States every day, according to Flight Explorer, a company that provides flight-tracking information.

Under the current system, airlines check the passengers before they board, then forward a manifest to U.S. officials 15 minutes after a plane takes off.

Passenger names and personal information _ passport information, address, flight details, form of payment _ are sent electronically to the Customs Service's National Targeting Center. There, law enforcement officials use computer programs to compare the data with lists of terrorists, wanted criminals and violators of immigration laws.

It can take up to two hours to check every passenger, said David Stempler, president of the Air Travelers Association. If the United States checked names before a flight took off, passengers would have to wait in their seats for two hours or show up at the airport two hours earlier, he said.

"So here's the choice: either you have to occasionally inconvenience 250 passengers or you otherwise inconvenience hundreds of thousands of passengers every day," Stempler said.

Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said the department is drafting a plan to get the passenger information before planes take off, but he called that a tough challenge.

"It's an extraordinarily complex issue," Knocke said. "We're not going to rush this. We're going to do this right."

Homeland Security officials will discuss the issue in Brussels, Belgium, this week with their counterparts in the European Union, Knocke said.

In the latest incident, an Alitalia flight from Milan, Italy, to Boston was sent to Bangor, Maine, on Tuesday after U.S. authorities discovered that a passenger had the same name as someone on the no-fly list.

Homeland Security officials said the man, whose name was not made public, was not a suspected terrorist. After questioning, he voluntarily withdrew his application for status as a permanent legal resident and will be deported, Customs and Border Protection Assistant Commissioner Kristi Clemens said Wednesday.

Five days earlier, an Air France flight from Paris to Boston landed in Bangor because a passenger's name was similar to a name on the no-fly list. He was allowed to continue his trip after officials determined he was not the person on the list.

Diversions have occurred a few other times. The most notable was in September when the singer formerly known as Cat Stevens was removed from a London-to-Washington flight and sent back to London because of alleged ties to terrorists. The singer has denied any such connection.