By August next year, all belly cargo entering the US must have been 100 per cent screened, a deadline the transport industry has said will be impossible to meet. It is lobbying intensely on Capitol Hill to have the deadline extended or the requirements relaxed.
Thirty percent of 6,767 cargo inspections by the Transportation Security Administration found security violations between October 2007 and June 2008, said Homeland Security inspector general Richard Skinner. “Air cargo is vulnerable to the introduction of explosives and other destructive items before it is loaded onto planes, potentially creating risks for the traveling public,†Skinner wrote in the report released yesterday in Washington.