Calling it a “milestone”, the TSA said it was a significant move en route to screening all cargo on passenger planes. Congress has mandated through the 9/11 law that 50 per cent of cargo on passenger carrying aircraft be screened by February 2009 and 100 per cent of cargo be screened by August 2010.
Other measures currently in place include screening all cargo at hundreds of small airports from coast to coast, screening cargo requested for specific flights or destinations, deploying more than 500 hundred specially trained explosive detection canines to airports, allowing only verified shippers to place cargo on passenger carrying airplanes and aggressively inspecting cargo operations with hundreds of inspectors.