11 December 2001

Insecure security Measures taken to calm passengers' nerves in the wake of 11 September have the potential to end up scaring them. Now that enough time has elapsed since 11 September for the airline industry and the regulators to see their real challenges more clearly, it is time to review what has been decided in the name of safety and security improvement.  Europe has increased security alertness levels at airports and, like the USA, has become stricter about how much carry-on baggage is acceptable and what may be carried in it. But member states of the European Civil Aviation Conference are still in the talking phase. The discussions about future measures are taking place from government down to airside employees, but the decision so far is that the nature of the real, continuing threat has still to be determined, so an appropriate reaction to it cannot yet be devised. For the time being those countries not yet equipped for full hold-baggage scanning are accelerating efforts to implement it, 100% baggage reconciliation is already in place, but no-one likes the idea of sky marshals.  So Europe has done little or nothing new on the security front since 11 September - basically on the premise that it had a mature and continually developing air transport security infrastructure. In 1988, Pan American flight 103, blown out of the sky by a terrorist bomb clearly planted at a European airport, was the principal catalyst for the Europeans to take aviation security seriously. Presaging 11 September, it took the loss of a US aircraft and many American lives to make things happen.  But the USA is where the 11 September atrocities were committed, and Americans rightly see themselves most likely to be targeted by factions who use terror as a weapon. Given the legally and culturally established right of US citizens to defend themselves with firearms, the presidential decision to set up an extensive programme of armed sky marshal training was a natural reaction to what had happened - and it was easy to do. A natural reaction it may have been, but reactions are gut-level responses, not strategies.  The other radical move given the governmental green light was to make cockpits impregnable to unauthorised entry, so at least there should be no threat of terrorists taking command of the aircraft.  The circumstances which the carriage of sky marshals presumes are that airport security would fail to detect one or more terrorists; that the terrorists would have managed to get some deadly weapons aboard the aircraft and gain access to them; that the sky marshal(s) on board would not be recognised and immobilised before they had successfully identified and killed or disabled the terrorists; and finally that they would not identify as terrorists people who are not.  The first two suppositions presume that ground security will fail to detect terrorists or their weapons. The fact that kerbside check-in - banned just after 11 September - has already been re-introduced, shows the kind of ground security mindset in the system as a whole that is condemned to be unsuccessful, moving sky marshals - the last line of defence - into the front line.  If the terrorists are clever enough to get themselves and their weaponry past an alert ground security system, accuracy with firearms is the simplest of the skills that the marshals will need. Preventing recognition (of themselves) and ensuring positive identification (of the terrorists) are more difficult. Security is a long-term business, and since, with any luck, the marshals will never have to use their skills in anger, how alert can they remain? Reacting to an obvious attack is relatively easy. Going into action without mistakes on waking from a bored doze following months of inaction in aircraft cabins is not guaranteed.  On 11 September the terrorists carried out a cleverly conceived and carefully planned strategy. They are unlikely to use the same tactics again in the short term, but if they were to do so they would take account of the new situation - including the fact that there may be marshals on board. There are many ways of identifying marshals, but one would be for a member of the terrorist team to act as a disruptive passenger - feigning "air rage".  The possibilities are many, and the industry has to consider that, in taking security action which is designed to make air travellers feel more secure, there may be an onboard incident in which passengers needlessly get shot. That would be disaster for the airlines, adding one more threat to the growing list of risks which passengers perceive they face.

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