Screeners at Los Angeles International Airport missed about 75% of simulated explosives and bomb parts that Transportation Security Administration testers hid under their clothes or in carry-on bags at checkpoints, the TSA report shows.

At Chicago O'Hare International Airport, screeners missed about 60% of hidden bomb materials that were packed in everyday carry-ons - including toiletry kits, briefcases and CD players. San Francisco International Airport screeners, who work for a private company instead of the TSA, missed about 20% of the bombs, the report shows. The TSA ran about 70 tests at Los Angeles, 75 at Chicago and 145 at San Francisco.

The report looks only at those three airports, using them as case studies to understand how well the rest of the U.S. screening system is working to stop terrorists from carrying bombs through checkpoints.

The failure rates at Los Angeles and Chicago stunned security experts.

"That's a huge cause for concern," said Clark Kent Ervin, the Homeland Security Department's former inspector general. Screeners' inability to find bombs could encourage terrorists to try to bring them on airplanes, Ervin said, and points to the need for more screener training and more powerful checkpoint scanning machines.

In the past year, the TSA has adopted a more aggressive approach in its attempt to keep screeners attentive - the agency runs covert tests every day at every U.S. airport, TSA spokeswoman Ellen Howe said. Screeners who miss detonators, timers, batteries and blocks that resemble plastic explosives get remedial training.

The failure rates at Los Angeles and Chicago are "somewhat misleading" because they don't reflect screeners' improved ability to find bombs, Howe said.

TSA chief Kip Hawley, responding to previous reports about screeners missing hidden weapons, told a House hearing Tuesday that high failure rates stem from increasingly difficult covert tests that require screeners to find bomb parts the size of a pen cap. "We moved from testing of completely assembled bombs -- to the small component parts," he said.

Terrorists bringing a homemade bomb on an airplane, or bringing on bomb parts and assembling them in the cabin, is the top threat against aviation. "Their focus is on using items easily available off grocery and hardware store shelves," Hawley said.

A report on covert tests in 2002 found screeners failed to find fake bombs, dynamite and guns 24% of the time. The TSA ran those tests shortly after it took over checkpoint screening from security companies.

Tests earlier in 2002 showed screeners missing 60% of fake bombs. In the late 1990s, tests showed that screeners missed about 40% of fake bombs, according to a separate report by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

The recent TSA report says San Francisco screeners face constant covert tests and are "more suspicious."

You mean a private company can do it better than a giant beauracracy?!!

Shock and Horror

Yep, look at the amazing job that Lockheed is doing with our new and improved Flight Service Stations

amen to that!

LOL! I was thinking the same thing when I read the headline in the paper today. They are too busy harassing flight crews to detect explosives.

I'm not sure if that is sarcasm (in regards to Lockheed) or not, as I haven't called a FSS in over a year!! LoL

Please expand on the above comment, for my benefit ;-) haha...

They missed my 3 ounces of toothpaste last month.....was that included in the statistics?

just call FSS and get a standard briefing to see for yourself.

first of all the only thing they do is read taf's and metar's to you, anyone could do that on their own. then theres the countless stories of them losing flight plans, they used to do it to me on a weekly basis when i was working down in dc. im pretty sure the list goes on, but those were the two biggest annoyances im aware of.

read a story the other day of about 10 pilots busting the camp david airspace near hagerstown. faa is not taking action due to all of them saying they were not briefed on the tfr when they called in. apparently the briefer never got the memo it was active.

The FSS system is a mess right now. In the last two weeks I've had them lose my flight plan (twice), change my plan's destination, miss a TFR (glad I looked it up myself) and insist on giving me winds aloft up to FL240 for my 172. I've also been on hold 30 minutes before getting a briefer and a bunch of miscellaneous other minor issues. I used to budget about five minutes for filing and getting a brief, now I expect about 15.

Granted, there are still some very good people there, but it often feels like 4/5 just hopped out of a clown car.

The last time I called for a briefing it seemed like 20 minutes of me saying, "yep...uh-huh...ok....I see..." while being read a laundry list of nearly every TAF and METAR along the flight.

You used to talk to someone who briefed the same area all day. Last time I called it seemed the first time he looked at ANY of the weather in the area was while he read it to me.

I may be suffering from small sample size, but my most recent phone calls to the briefer resulted in MUCH longer conversations with me receiving LESS valuable information during it. So far, not impressed.