Congress passes aviation legislation

WASHINGTON — Congress passed an aviation bill Wednesday that attempts to close gaps in airport security and shorten screening lines, but leaves thornier issues unresolved.

The bill also extends the Federal Aviation Administration’s programs for 14 months at current funding levels. It was approved in the Senate by a vote of 89 to 4. The House had passed the measure earlier in the week and it now goes to President Barack Obama, who must sign the bill by Friday when the FAA’s current operating authority expires to avoid a partial agency shutdown.

Responding to attacks by violent extremists associated with the Islamic State group on airports in Brussels and Istanbul, the bill includes an array of provisions aimed at protecting “soft targets” outside security perimeters. Other provisions designed to address potential “insider threats” would toughen vetting of airport workers and other employees with access to secure areas, expand random employee inspections and require reviews of perimeter security. Investigators suspect a bomb had been smuggled aboard a Russian Metrojet airliner that disintegrated over Egypt last year.

The measure is the most significant airport security bill to pass Congress in a decade, and its provisions “speak directly to some of the gaps that we perceive to exist in our aviation system in this country,” said Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.

But it also is notable for what it doesn’t contain: A plan to remove air traffic control operations from the FAA and put them under the control of a private, non-profit corporation run primarily by segments of the aviation industry.

Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and the airline industry had made privatizing air traffic control a top priority. But they ran into opposition from other powerful committee chairmen who don’t want to cede oversight responsibility for a large share of the nation’s aviation system to a private corporation. Other segments of the aviation industry also objected to the plan, saying they feared the corporation would be dominated by airline interests.

Shuster hasn’t given up on the plan and may revive it next year when Congress will face a new deadline to extend FAA’s authority.