REPORT OF THE - Archives - Syracuse University

hours per day, including time taken to train security personnel. The low level of training
for Alert employees at both Heathrow and Frankfurt reflected these restrictions.
The absence of management control and direction was apparent in the day-to-day
working level of these Pan Am security operations. Experience and qualifications seemed
to have had little to do with the hiring of at least some Alert Security personnel, Pan Am
had no set procedure at either Frankfurt or Heathrow for distribution of FAA security
bulletin information, such as that for the radio bomb, to these security workers.
Given the circumstances then prevailing, it is not surprising that the FAA inspector who
reviewed Pan Am's Frankfurt security operation in October 1988 could conclude that it
had very substantial problems. It is astonishing, however, that Pan Am permitted those
problems and others to continue at that level month upon month after the disaster.
The problems repeatedly reflected in Pan Am's Frankfurt operations could be solved - as
events would prove - with only a relatively brief but concentrated amount of management
attention. It took just one week of that attention in September 1989, following a meeting
between the Pan Am Chief Executive Officer and the Administrator of the FAA.
The Federal Aviation Administration
For years, FAA security personnel questioned Pan Am's commitment to implementation
of the FAA extraordinary security procedures. As early as October 1986, the FAA had
convened an unusual meeting of Pan Am's security management at FAA's regional
headquarters in Brussels, to discuss Pan Am's implementation of the extraordinary
security procedures the FAA had promulgated.
FAA inspectors reported Pan Am's operations at Frankfurt and Heathrow were in
compliance with FAA standards as late as October 1988. Yet the FAA proposed large
fines for deficiencies found at those same airports as the result of its post-Flight 103
inspection undertaken approximately 60 days after the October 1988 inspection. True, the
investigation of Pan Am operations during December 1988 - January 1989, following
Flight 103, presumably was more thorough than a "routine" FAA inspection. Obviously,
however, the problems found during this investigation did not suddenly arise during the
two months before Flight 103.
The October 1988 security inspection of Pan Am at Frankfurt did find substantial
problems. But, the FAA security system was not set up so that this sort of inspection
report would ring an alarm, let alone lead to a quick, decisive regulatory response even
for a carrier like Pan Am with a history of security problems. The report of the October
Frankfurt inspection was not even finalized in FAA's Brussels headquarters until after
December 21, 1988.
It might be unrealistic to expect that FAA headquarters could or would react to each
security flaw identified by any of its agents after a field inspection. Nor should it be
necessary for senior FAA management to become involved before adequate security will
be assured in the field. But the circumstances at Frankfurt in the fall of 1988 were
anything but routine.
Also troubling is the FAA's response to the problems of Pan Am at Frankfurt after Flight
103 had exploded.
Both the public and the regulatory spotlight were focused on just those types of security
problems throughout early 1989. Congressional hearings were held. The Secretary of
Transportation set up a task force expressly to look into the matter. The Commission
would have expected the FAA to give top priority to security operations at the two