Hijack broadcasts draw protests

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33740, 13 January 1975, Page 14

Hijack broadcasts draw protests

(From CHARLES COOPER, London correspondent of "The Press') LONDON, January 12.

The blow-by-blow broadcast of almost every detail of the attempt to outwit Heathrow Airport’s hijacker last week has raised strong protests from every authority involved in the drama.

Not the least shocked is the Prime Minister (Mr Wilson), who has ordered immediate research into ways of excluding such critical communications from, the public airwaves.

Thousands of Britons, perhaps millions, with quite cheap transistors were able to monitor every word of the tense radio dialogue between the captain of the British Airways 111 aircraft and the security strategists in the control tower.

Not only was all the scheming instantly revealed to all the listeners to their own receivers, but Independent Television News (ITN) and the private radio station London Broadcasting avidly grabbed every word and tossed it into the public ether with abandon.

The 8.8. C., no doubt as keenly monitoring, refrained from broadcasting security items in response to police requests, but I.T.N. and London Broadcasting say that they received no message to hold back. TRANSISTOR NEEDED? What has shaken antihijack planners is that in all their preparations and rehearsals for just a situation they had not anticipated that half the country and the news media could listen to every detail of the crisis and the supposedly secret manoeuvres to combat it.

Had the hijacker had an appropriate transistor, he would have been ahead of the game at every move. And

in this instance, with the putting out of the actual plane--to-tower conversations, he would not even have needed a radio with a fancy waveband.

The obvious lesson for a future hijacker is to bring along a transistor incorporatting the top end of the very high frequency band and nothing between the aircraft and the tower could be kept from him.

Listening to pilot conversations is something of a cult for boys, school-age to middle-age, in Britain’s airport cities. Any day of the week at Heathrow, a dozen or more plane spotters, with vhf receivers, a binocular, and notebooks take up station on the public viewing tower earnestly logging every aircraft, its registration, call sign, and the chat between captain and control. HOBBYISTS Even the heat of the present row has not burnt off these hobbyists. They are still there in full view, eavesdropping on the flying traffic with contented dedication. This is in spite of the authorities dusting off the legislation and finding that by international law it is an offence even to pause in the vhf area when sweeping the wavebands. All those people glued to their vhf frequencies on Tuesday were risking a fine of up to $7OO. In the meantime, the boffins are working on the Prime Minister’s instructions to seek privacy for future operations.

Initially, three possible solutions have emerged. For planes on the ground, a tele-

phone link could be plugged into the normal socket in the aircraft’s nose. Radio scramblers, as used by the military, could be introduced. The single sideband radio, used between an aircraft and its company purely for business messages, would be difficult for amateurs to pick up. SECOND THOUGHTS Whatever happens, until privacy is secured it is unlikely that television and radio stations will be quite so quick on the trigger again. [Even the drawing room audiences clamped to their sets by the electrifying drama subsequently had second thoughts about the wisdom, even the morality, of the live broadcasts.]