Airport beefs up security

Motorists would be required to drive through two new security checkpoints -- complete with vehicle barriers and canopies -- to access Westchester County Airport during heightened threat-level periods under a plan to beef up defenses against terrorist attack.

While most general and corporate aviation areas of the suburban Rye Brook airport have security gates, the main terminal access road has no such barriers for law enforcement officers to use when threat levels rise.

"If you decide to zoom off, there's nothing to stop you from doing it," Larry Salley, the county's transportation commissioner, said Wednesday during a meeting of the Airport Advisory Board.

Other plans call for the construction of a 4,000-square-foot addition to the main terminal for baggage screening, which currently shares space with passenger check-in, and the creation of a secure holding area for commercial aircraft parked overnight.

Transportation officials estimate that 18 to 20 idle commercial aircraft remain scattered around the airport overnight. They hope to move those planes to two central locations that would have what Salley called a "virtual fence," restricting access to authorized personnel.

Ramped-up efforts to limit access to planes left overnight at the airport come nearly a year after 20-year-old Philippe Patricio of Bethel landed there in a single-engine Cessna that police say he and two teenage friends stole from Danbury Municipal Airport.

Patricio pleaded guilty in January to charges of reckless endangerment, unauthorized use of a vehicle, flying while intoxicated and resisting arrest, under an agreement that his lawyer said allows him to receive less than a year in jail in New York. Legal proceedings are continuing in Connecticut.

"We actually had this in the works before that happened. But it's that type of thing that we're looking to prevent," Salley said of the measures in an interview.

In addition to creating a separate enclosure for commercial aircraft, Salley said a new intrusion detection system employing thermal imaging cameras will be activated along the 700-acre airport's fence at the end of June.

Salley said the county installed the $3.7 million federally funded system as an alternative to a Transportation Security Administration mandate calling for a 20-foot buffer zone on each side of the airport's fence that was impossible to meet because of property-right issues.

While details about the new security perimeter remain tightly guarded, including an upcoming demonstration of the system, travelers are expected to get a firsthand glimpse of the proposed baggage screening addition.

Officials hope to build the addition at the front of the main terminal where a monument and flagpole are currently located. They said the structure will enable baggage checkers to segregate luggage from the airport's check-in area, where the screening process has taken place since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"We try to separate the people so that you minimize the density of people in the area, and that's important from a security perspective," said Romero Iral, the TSA deputy federal security director in charge of protecting the airport.

Iral would not comment about the other proposals or what threat levels they would be implemented under, citing security.

"It's designed to enhance security when the need arises," he said.

Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., said the need for heightened airport security measures is well-documented.

"This is an airport that has significant commercial flights, so they need to pay attention," said Shays, who is chairman of the House Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations.

"All of that makes a lot of sense," Shays said. "The only thing, it raises a question that (it) hasn't been done already."

All future plans must be approved by the county's Board of Legislators, according to Salley, who said the earliest the checkpoints, baggage screening and holding areas could be created would be in late 2007.

Salley was unable to estimate the cost of the enhancements, the majority of which he said would most likely be funded with federal and state money. A $20 million airport fund, which is self-sustaining, would likely pay the balance, he said.

While members of the Airport Advisory Board nodded in agreement over the projects on Wednesday, Salley did find himself answering questions from the public about whether the proposed baggage screening addition constituted airport expansion.

"It's not expansion," Salley told the advisory board. "The world changed after 9/11."

Greenwich Time