The Transportation Security Administration has ordered airlines to stop accepting cargo from a small Torrance shipping company, citing an ongoing concern with its security measures.

The agency took the rare step after J.H. World Express failed to address a series of security violations dating back to last summer, federal officials said. They would not comment in detail about the problems but said the company's procedures were not adequate to ensure the safety of cargo shipped on passenger aircraft.

The company handles only a few tons of cargo a year, shipping it through Los Angeles International Airport to Asia, Europe and South America. The bulk of its shipments travel aboard all-cargo airplanes and will not be affected by the TSA action.

"There's a lot of obstacles. You have to do this, you have to do that," said the company's president, James Hsu. "We're not ignoring them. They want us to do training, we'll do training, but it's not enough."

The TSA first turned up weaknesses in the company's security procedures during a routine inspection last summer, said Larry Fetters, the federal security director at LAX. Federal inspectors had been trying since then to correct those problems, he said.

Passenger airlines often carry freight and mail in the vast holds beneath their cabins.

The cargo shippers who use them have to follow strict federal rules governing how they train their workers, how they screen shipments and what documents they keep.

J.H. World Express, Fetters said, was in "grievous noncompliance" with some of those regulations.

The TSA notified the company Wednesday morning that its certification to ship cargo on passenger aircraft had been revoked.

The agency warned air carriers at LAX that they would face $25,000 fines if they accepted the company's cargo.

The TSA has not revoked a company's certification in more than three years. But Fetters likened the company to a driver who has gone through too many red lights.

"We finally had to say, 'If you're not going to play by the rules, you're not going to play,' " he said.

Source: http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/articles/2510241.html