In 1999, Jeff Davis, a former Congressional staffer, started his own consulting firm. As a way to promote his business, he began publishing Transportation Weekly, a newsletter emailed to readers eager to learn about the latest in federal transportation and public works policy.  

 Compared to hustling for hourly consulting work or lobbying his former colleagues, Davis preferred researching and writing his own publication. Within a year, he ditched the consulting business and devoted himself full time to Transportation Weekly. 

 On September 11, while sitting in his Virginia home watching smoke rise from the Pentagon, Davis started emailing and calling his contacts.  Federal office buildings were evacuated, but Congressional employees started coming back to work the next day. He remembers that their offices were deemed safe because the airspace over Washington, D.C. had been closed.  

 At the time, a decade before Congressional committee hearings were regularly streamed online, one of the best ways to stay abreast of legislation was by attending Congressional committee hearings and chatting with the other attendees.  

 Davis’s reporting has always depended on talking with people, but his access to legislative staff and policymakers was especially important at a moment when sensitive information was moving extraordinarily quickly. He had developed relationships and built trust with key players on Capitol Hill and at the U.S. Department of Transportation who were willing to share information. He explained, “Many offices don’t have formal communications with each other, so they are eager to learn what I know.” He walked up and down the corridors of Congressional office buildings, seeking out his trusted contacts. 

 “I had never seen major legislation move as fast as it did in the days and weeks after September 11,” he said.  “It’s my understanding that the last time Congress acted so quickly was after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and President Roosevelt asked Congress for a declaration of war.” 

 Below is the top of the first Transportation Weekly edition published after September 11, as well as highlights of that edition. To read the entire edition, click here. 

  Aviation Security 

“The horrifying terrorist hijackings that turned passenger airliners into airborne bombs last week have forced an intense reevaluation of airline security. Before any airports were allowed to reopen after Tuesday’s attacks, they had to be in certified compliance with stricter security protocols. These new restrictions are only a first step, however, towards more sweeping restrictions to come.” 

Previous incidents had led to minimal changes, but Davis predicted, “the attacks have brought unprecedented public visibility to the inherent problems in aviation security, and drastic reforms are inevitable, both to keep these disasters from happening again and to reassure a public that air travel is still safe before fear drops demand to a level that bankrupts airlines.” 

Davis described many of the new security restrictions mandated by US DOT on September 12, including banning all knives. He wrote, “A sensible restriction that no one had ever thought of, because no one believed that hijackers armed only with knives could commandeer four planes in one morning. This requires setting metal detectors to heightened sensitivity levels, more wand inspections and closer scrutiny of carry-on luggage. Screeners are reportedly confiscating any sharp object, including fingernail clippers with the foldout nail cleaning blade.” 

 Airline Bailout  

“Last Friday afternoon and evening, Congressional negotiators were feverishly trying to draft a package of direct federal appropriations and federally guaranteed loans to airlines to partially reimburse them for the lost revenues from the shutdown and slow start-up of the national airspace system and to allow them to survive what is expected to be a lengthy period of slow demand. 

Airline sources estimate that they have lost $1 billion since the attacks and that their total losses for 2001 may top $10 billion, two-thirds of it due to the attacks and the resultant fears of flying.” Davis noted that Midway Airlines, which was already operating under Chapter 11, closed permanently and fired all of its 1,700 employees on September 12. 

Reagan National Airport Faces Uncertain Future 

“The ease with which suicidal hijackers were able to commandeer jet airliners and ram them into targets on the ground has called into question the future of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, the major business airport of the Washington D.C. area, which remains closed indefinitely…In the past, Congress has opposed proposals to close Reagan National because of its convenient proximity to downtown and the relative remoteness of the city’s other airport, Dulles International.” 

 New Terrorist Approach Changes Attitudes About Hijacking 

“The success of the terrorist hijackings last week and the subsequent assaults on federal buildings using airliners as weapons of war will cause a serious reevaluation of the assumptions underlying FAA and airline policies on airline hijacking.” 

Transportation Weekly described past major hijackings including 18 attempts in 1968 and another 40 in 1969. In response to a hijacking in 1970, President Nixon ordered the formation of the Sky Marshals, a plainclothes branch of the Customs Service that placed anonymous armed agents on planes to combat hijackers. 

 Previous Warnings of Terrorist Threat 

Transportation Weekly included this excerpt of an April 2000 U.S. General Accounting Office report, Aviation Security: Vulnerabilities Still Exist in the Aviation Security System. 

“FAA and the airline industry have made little progress in improving the effectiveness of airport checkpoint screeners. Screeners are not adequately detecting dangerous objects, and long-standing problems affecting screeners’ performance remain, such as the rapid screener turnover and the inattention to screener training…Problems identified by others, such as the Department of Transportation’s Inspector General, point out weaknesses in a number of other key aviation protection measures. Taken together, these problems show the chain of security protecting our aviation system has not one but several weak links…The fact that there have been no major security incidents in recent years—such as the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103—could breed an attitude of complacency. Maintaining or improving aviation security in such an environment is more challenging. However, serious vulnerabilities in our aviation security system exist and must be adequately addressed.”