Airlines, US Dept. of Homeland Security lock horns over proposed airport 'exit' programme

Both the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and the US Air Transport Association (ATA) have lodged strong objections to a proposal by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The proposal seeks to set up an "exit" programme at US airports, which will require airlines to fund and manage the collection of fingerprints from non-US citizens departing the United States.

ATA president, and CEO, James May, has called for the exit plan proposal to be "terminated now." He added that ''not only is the rulemaking proceeding not justifiable, it is purely and simply against the law." He said DHS is "ignoring Congress' clear direction that the department be responsible for fingerprint collection.'' He said that the DHS was trying to unfairly shrug this responsibility onto the airlines.

In a letter to Homeland Security secretary, Michael Chertoff, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, IATA director general and CEO, Giovanni Bisignani, said the programme"would result in significant and unnecessary delays in passenger processing," disrupt connections at airports throughout the world, and cost the airline industry $12.3 billion over 10 years. He acknowledged that airlines have a ''security responsibility'', but said the industry "can no longer tolerate such inefficiencies and the impact they have on the travelling public and the international aviation system generally."

Bisignani added that the exit programme would "impose yet another duplicative, complex and costly mandate on the back of the industry. . .[that] can no longer be dismissed as simply the 'cost of doing business' for an airline operating in the US." He was referring in particular to the part that mandates carriers to have to collect fingerprints.