Airlines want new hijack deterrents

Press, 13 September 1983, Page 17

Airlines want new hijack deterrents

From

PETER DURISCH

in London

The most effective anti-hijacking agent at Kennedy Airport in New York is short, scruffy, unshaven, and dressed in a ragged uniform. Growling through a cigarette clenched between uneven teeth, he orders passengers waiting to board flights out of the way so that he can sweep the floor.

This unlikely undercover agent watches intently for any suspicious behaviour which he immediately reports to colleagues. He is part of an intensive airport security system which is very expensive and usually effective. However, after the hijacking of an Air France 727 on a flight to Paris, during which passengers suffered a traumatic ordeal for four days,- important questions about aviation security have once more arisen.

The Air France incident was the twenty-seventh attempted hijacking since January, and the total this year is expected to exceed 40 such crimes.

In the past two months alone there have been 10 hijackings, eight of them in America and usually involving people intent on free passage to Cuba.

Hijacking is once more a growth industry with a steady increase in recent years, but until 1968 these crimes were rare, averaging only about five each year.

In 1968, the increasing militancy of rebel groups, particularly Arab nationalism and the Palestinian question, caused an increase to 35 hijackings. The next year the figure soared to 87, culminating in September when Palestinian guerrillas hijacked a Pan American jumbo jet and blew it up in Cairo, following that by seizing Swissair, TWA, and BOAC aircraft and detonating them at Dawson’s Field in Jordan.

The events of that year led to a public outcry and a total review of airline security. Electronic screening was introduced at airports, hand baggage and body searches became commonplace, and small armies of security people vetted passengers.

After another bad year in 1970, hijackings fell steadily until 1976 when just 18 incidents occurred. Since then the annual number has risen to the expected 40 this year.

Government and international agencies, such as the Federal Aviation Administration in Washington

and the International Civil Aviation Organisation, have taken a keen interest in hijackings and techniques of combating them. Among the most active bodies is the security section of the International Air Transport Association based in Montreal.

“During the early 1970 s we established an intensified aviation security programme,” I.A.T.A.’s director of security, Rodney Wallis, say's. “We work with governments to survey international airports and identify weaknesses in specific locations. We have surveyed about 40 airports so far in this way. “We have developed profiles of likely hijackers and we use security people working openly and undercover. You need people to see you patrolling an area because that is a deterrent, but you also need undercover people to find those hijackers who aren’t put off by the overt security.” The present rise in hijackings has raised problems to which there may be no solutions. For example, no security system can find a weapon or explosive device which doesn’t exist. That is precisely the situation in many hijackings when a person claims to have a bomb. Subsequent investigation often shows that he was bluffing, but no aircraft captain will take the risk of calling his bluff. “In all cases the prime concern of the captain is safety and he wants to get his aircraft on the ground as soon as possible. The skipper has to decide if a hijacker is genuine but he won’t take a chance.”

Earlier this year a man hijacked an American aircraft to Cuba using a novel technique. He simply opened a bottle assumed to be alcohol but in fact containing petrol and poured it over himself. He then stood there holding a cigarette lighter threatening to set himself alight. The captain went to Cuba.

Such events are almost impossible to defeat and the only sure long-term solution is for countries invariably to return or prosecute hijackers. Political realities mean that in many cases this simply does not happen. “The solution to hijacking rests with governments,” Wallis says. “There must never be a haven. Sadly there sometimes is one.” — Copyright — London Observer Service.