On the joyful Christmas day of 2009, Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab - an influential young Nigerian passenger with a destructive cause, almost succeeded in blowing-up Delta / Northwest Airline flight 253 bound for Detroit - USA with 278 people on board from Schiphol - Amsterdam.
It finally failed due to the sheer luck factor above everything else. Currently there is a network-wide intelligence alert about potential hijackings on Indian passenger aircraft, predominantly within the sub-continental zone.
 The defeat of terrorism in Sri Lanka should never be a logical or practical rationale for relaxation of aviation precautions - locally or globally. The terror against airports and airlines is no longer launched only by naïve - low tech - amateurish - rough faced - detectable - primitive - and confronting terrorists. The future of terrorism belongs to borderless, scientific and well deceptive strategists.
The anxiety here is not selling an air ticket or air cargo space, but what they scheme to do with the seat or the lower deck space purchased. Our complete success is not only achieving a flight full of passengers and cargo, but ensuring that flight lands at the other end - in single tube - with all hopeful souls smiling safely on board.
Ground security
A man with destructive motives once made his fiancée pregnant to gain compassion at airport security controls. He packed her baggage with a time triggered explosive device without her knowledge and kissed her goodbye (forever) at London Heathrow airport. The trick of the disguised (terrorist) lover penetrated all security controls, and was co-incidentally detected at the aircraft entry point by an unorthodox security agent. It saved the life of the expecting lady, lives of the crew and that of 374 passengers.
How safe we can be in midair is often defined by the efficiency of the security at ground level. The aero security begins on ground with passenger traffic profiling for security and authenticity. Ensuring behavioural security and motive authenticity from moving volumes of diverse passenger ethnicities (and languages) is a proficient task. It demands comprehension, dexterity and detective passion beyond standard aviation security role. The human security profiling should outreach to wrap the airline and airport staff as well in it - at the functional and managerial stratums.
The concurrent managing of air travel risk posed by all categories of passenger baggage, air cargo, flight catering and utility uploading etc is a complicate function. The continuous (professional) surveillance and verifications in these critical processes - from the point of final security sterilization until they are safely loaded and preserved - are well and truly vital. Failures will only lead to a troubled episode of severe breach of protection. The stretched list of local and global experiences on aviation security failures forces us to wake up from the comfortable but risky siesta.
Airborne risks
There are only a few better examples of ‘absolute life dependency’ than being seated inside an airborne passenger aircraft. The flight crew and the passengers on board are at the mercy of weather, cabin fire safety, instrumental precision, fuel adequacy, mechanical stability, air traffic guidance, voice links and even birds - to name a few aero risk factors. These dependencies distinctively present its inbuilt hazards thus making air travel risks to leap beyond conventional protective parameters.
Detecting a bomb on board is theoretically a healthier option compared to a swift midair explosion. Yet the emotional reality is that we face virtual death thousand times at 33,000 feet up in the sky when we discover a ticking timer device - before the actual death caused by its explosion. These vibes of fear are commonly shared by the flight crews and sky security marshals too in real life midair panic ordeals.
Managing in-flight bomb contingences demands versatile risk reduction designing and pressure tested response skills from the crews. That helps to curtail the threat to people and the aircraft as much as practicably possible.
The danger of hijack is yet a reality though armchair pundits try to downplay this decisive avenue of threat by quoting statistics. These pundits seem to believe that hijackers too are fondly flirting around some pastime digits. And they also appear to demand that - for a hijack to happen there needs to be a formidable terrorist outfit behind it and the hijackers must be heavily armed on board. They simply disregard the fact how unarmed yet gritty hijackers took control of planes in the past.
Theoreticians also preach that the pilots should keep the cockpit door locked - during the entire voyage - to prevent intrusion. Ask a weathered terrorist (or a true soldier) on how to force a pilot to unbolt the cockpit door, and he will tell you 10 different ways of getting it done. The quandary here is that, such stun techniques do not exist in the Internet for bookish gurus to copy, paste and preach them as their own expertise.
Trained terrorist pilots disguised as trendy passengers, taking subtle domination in the first class cabin is another terrifying potentiality. At a specified point en-route, if they take over the command of the plane by using combined force, we on board would either witness a chilling repeat drama of 9/11 - or we would soon realize that our set itineraries are just been changed (uninvited) by the terror pilots in command.
Such structured criminal moves - sadly - cannot be detected by the use of body, baggage or cargo scanners. Mind and motive scanning perhaps are the most complex security aptitudes required in the arena of air travel risk managing. The question is how primed and certain are we?
Readiness intensity
It is pretty clear that the risks in air travel get complicated by the day. Making aviation a risk resistant sphere is a diligent responsibility of all in the industry be it airports or airlines. It pierces deeper than pure risk reduction, security, fire protection or mere safety. Finally, it is our survival in the market. For an airline that operates with 10 aircraft, losing a plane means an instant 10% minus bang on the service capacity. The indirect, snowballing and ultimate losses are too numerous to reckon.
The readiness levels by all elements to comprehend and mitigate the risks in air travel need holistic intensification. The airports and airlines should focus on ‘updated and future centric’ risk protective designing and risk reduction skills education. Managing air travel risk is an excessively crucial business to be left in the hands of a few security frontliners. The alarm call is loud and clear. Are we listening?
(The writer is an enterprise risk management & BCP specialist, a pragmatic aviation risk and security trainer and the CEO of Strategic Risk Solutions. He can be reached solutions@sltnet.lk) |
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