A federal "Do Not Board" list failed at least three times this year to stop travelers with serious, infectious diseases from taking commercial flights, according to information obtained by congressional investigators.
Although the "Do Not Board" list is separate from the terrorism "No Fly" list, its purpose is similar: to keep those who might pose a threat to travelers from flying. Its success, however, appears to be limited.
From January 2009 until August, nine infectious people on the list tried to board flights, according to information the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provided to Republican staff on the House Energy and Commerce committee. The list proved successful in stopping six of them — including a traveler who was denied boarding three times last December in Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego. The list failed to stop three others.
The CDC say no one was sickened by the three travelers, and a Transportation Security Administration spokesman says the loopholes that allowed them to travel have been fixed.
Even so, U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess of Texas, the top Republican on the committee's oversight and investigations subcommittee, wants more information about the health-related breaches. He sent a letter Thursday to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano seeking details about the effectiveness of the "Do Not Board" list.
As another peak holiday travel period begins, Burgess told USA TODAY he's concerned about passengers with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis getting on a packed flight. "It shouldn't happen," Burgess, a medical doctor, said of the three previous failures. "People need to be sure everyone is doing their job so their safety is not compromised."
The "Do Not Board" list was created in June 2007 after an Atlanta man with drug-resistant tuberculosis eluded federal authorities and set off an international health scare flying back to the United States from his wedding in Europe.
In the three failures of the list this year, neither the CDC nor the TSA would give the dates the people traveled, what cities they flew between or what airlines were involved. Both agencies cited privacy concerns and provided few details of the incidents. One occurred in January and the two others in March, the CDC told USA TODAY.
All three travelers had tuberculosis, said Nina Marano, the CDC's quarantine branch chief. The CDC contacted passengers seated near the three TB patients and "no one was sickened by these three people," she said.
One incident in which the "Do Not Board" list failed became public earlier this year, however. On Jan. 9, despite being on the list, a tuberculosis patient took a US Airways flight from Philadelphia to San Francisco. The airline — which at the time was only required to check the list every 24 hours — wasn't aware the person's name had been added, airline spokesman Todd Lehmacher said this week. The TSA added the person to the list at 9:38 p.m. on Jan. 8 and the passenger checked in at 11:53 a.m. the next day, Lehmacher said.
Currently, 32 people are on the "Do Not Board" list; all have tuberculosis and a few have drug-resistant strains that are difficult to treat, Marano said. "Tuberculosis is a highly contagious disease with significant implications for the patient and his immediate contacts," she said.
TB patients have been a focus of the list because the disease can be spread by coughing. Transmitting it during a long flight — though rare — has been documented in the past.
As of last month, the TSA — rather than airlines — began checking passengers on all flights against the watch lists. In some past breaches, airlines were late in checking the watch lists against passenger manifests — a flaw that enabled the man who tried to set off a bomb in Times Square to board a flight May 3 in New York. Faisal Shahzad was arrested before the plane departed.
Shahzad's name had been put on the "No Fly" list hours before he boarded an Emirates airlines flight at New York's Kennedy International Airport.
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But the airline checked the list before his name was added. The TSA's new system, called Secure Flight, "is specifically designed to close that gap," said TSA spokesman Nicholas Kimball.
Within days after the Shahzad incident last May, the TSA ordered all airlines to begin checking for updates to the "No Fly" list within two hours of departure to avoid such scenarios from happening again. Kimball did not respond to USA TODAY's questions about why the directive wasn't issued in January, after the US Airways incident. The other two breaches of the "Do Not Board" list involved different issues, the TSA said.
Although Kimball said the problems in all of the breaches have been addressed by Secure Flight, aviation consultant Michael Boyd remains skeptical. He said the TSA's watch lists haven't worked well in the past and noted that many who pose threats aren't on any list. "I think relying on Secure Flight to protect us from it is overly ambitious," he said.
Jeffrey Levi, executive director of the public health watchdog group Trust for America's Health, called the three incidents "disappointing." Having effective public health systems is important, he said.
"We worry a lot about some man-made terrorist attack; but nature-made terror attacks can be just as deadly and can come in the form of an infectious disease," Levi said
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/flights/2010-12-17-rw_donotboard16_ST_N.htm
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