REPORT OF THE - Archives - Syracuse University

In a major inspection conducted May 8-23, 1989, the FAA found that major security
violations still existed in Pan Am's Frankfurt operations.
One FAA inspector wrote in the report dated June 7, 1989, that while the operations of
the four other U.S. carriers operating at Frankfurt were "good," Pan Am was "totally
unsatisfactory."
Wrote the FAA inspector: "Posture [of Pan Am] considered unsafe, all passengers flying
out of Frankfurt on Pan Am are at great risk."
When the FAA Associate Administrator with responsibility for the security division
learned of the May inspection results, he called a June 14 meeting with Pan Am officials,
who presented a plan for corrective action while contesting some of FAA's allegations.
Still, the security violations and deficiencies at Pan Am's Frankfurt station continued. An
unannounced inspection in August of 1989 found that many of the same security
problems from the May inspection remained uncorrected, especially unguarded airplanes
and failure to search personnel maintaining the aircraft.
Pan Am came to a September 12 meeting with FAA on security at Frankfurt with yet
another "action plan." A later gathering, however, included a private session between the
FAA Administrator and the chief executive officer of the airline. That same evening, a
team of high-level Pan Am managers, accompanied by FAA security inspectors, flew to
Frankfurt.
Within one week, personnel changes at the station had been ordered and all security
violations and deficiencies corrected. At the next FAA regular inspection, Pan Am at
Frankfurt was rated a model station. This corrective action occurred nine months after the
Flight 103 bombing.
The bombing of Flight 103 occurred against the background of warnings that trouble was
brewing in the European terrorist community. Nine security bulletins that could have
been relevant to the tragedy were issued between June 1, 1988 and December 21, 1988.
One described a Toshiba radio cassette player, fully rigged as a bomb with a barometric
triggering device, found by the West German police in the automobile of a member of the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC). The FAA
bulletin cautioned that the device "would be very difficult to detect via normal X-ray,"
and told U.S. carriers that passenger/baggage reconciliation procedures should be
"rigorously applied."
On December 5, 1988, an anonymous telephone caller to the U.S. Embassy in Helsinki,
Finland, said that sometime within the next two weeks a Finnish woman would carry a
bomb aboard a Pan Am aircraft flying from Frankfurt to the United States. The FAA
Security Bulletin on that threat was issued December 9.
At the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, the senior staff, with concurrence of the Ambassador,
decided that the warning should be made public. Thus the Helsinki threat information
was publicly posted at the Embassy on December 14 and was generally made available
throughout the 2,000-member community of Americans, including news media and
private contractor personnel, in Moscow. For these Americans, Pan Am through
Frankfurt was the most accessible and most commonly used route to the United States.
The Commission found no passenger who changed his or her travel plans because of the
Helsinki threat except one civilian who was scheduled to fly Pan Am to the United States
through Frankfurt on December 16 and switched to a direct flight on December 18. While