TSA tightens No Fly airline requirements

The Transportation Security Administration said May 5 that it has tightened commercial airline requirements on screening passengers against updates to the No Fly list.

Starting immediately, airlines must match passengers against the updated No Fly list within two hours of receiving electronic notification of an expedited addition to the list, an administration official said in a statement released to the media on background.

The changes come in the wake of suspected terrorist Faisal Shahzad's May 3 arrest on an Emirates airlines flight to Dubai. Shahzad managed to board the airplane despite federal officials having added his name to the No Fly list earlier that day.

"The airline seemingly didn't check the name, and the suspect was allowed to purchase a ticket and obtain a boarding pass," the administration official said in the statement.

Previously, airlines had 24 hours to re-check passenger manifests against new additions to the No Fly list. Shahzad's presence on the plane was discovered by federal officials as the plane prepared to take off; the flight was ordered back to the gate by air traffic controllers.

Shahzad reportedly told the Custom and Border Protection agents who arrested him in his seat, "I was expecting you. Are you NYPD or FBI?" Shahzad has admitted to perpetrating the May 1 attempted car bomb terrorist attack in Times Square, according to the criminal complaint against him.  

Responsibility for checking passenger manifest against the No Fly list increasingly is a TSA, not an airline, responsibility. Under a TSA program dubbed Secure Flight, commercial airlines transmit to TSA passenger data, including birth date and gender, and the agency itself ensures that watchlisted individuals are denied a boarding pass.

TSA's goal is to vet for itself all passengers on all domestic commercial flights by early 2010 and all passengers on all international commercial flights into, out of, or over the U.S. by the end of 2010.

Meanwhile, the importance of Shahzad's electronic trail in apprehending the would-be bomber has become clearer.

After identifying the telephone number Shahzad used to call the seller of the Nissan Pathfinder he allegedly filled with explosives and parked in Times Square, federal investigators looked at other phone calls made to and from the telephone. Database records showed that he received four calls from Pakistan--from a number that Shahzad himself gave to CBP officials in February when he re-entered the United States from Pakistan, reports the New York Times. The CBP gave that phone number at the time to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which kept it in a database, the NYT article adds.

For more:
- read the background statement by an administration official
- see the May 4 criminal complaint against Shahzad

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