How airline bombs get through

Press, 18 April 1986, Page 16

How airline bombs get through

From ‘The Economist,’ London

Acts of terrorism in the air have been going on for the last two decades and now number in the hundreds. One of the latest came on April 2, when a bomb blew a hole in the side of a T.W.A. airliner on its way from Rome to Athens and sent four people, including a baby, flying through the sky to their deaths. Despite the world’s grisly familiarity with such attacks, aviation’s security blanket remains full of holes; and there is little prospect that it will be adequately repaired. Why not? Begin with the arithmetic. About 6700 airports receive scheduled air services. This year around one billion passengers will pass through those airports.

On an average day airliners carrying 2.7 million passengers on scheduled flights will take off about 30,000 times from those airports; at any one moment some 3000 airlines will be in the air. The sheer volume makes wholly leak-proof security an impossible ambition. The industry still tries. The regulations of the International Civil Aviation Organisation require three separate checks before an aircraft takes off: a search of all passengers (with a metal-detecting arch, for example); x-ray screening of handbaggage, conducted with three members of airport staff on duty; and “reconciliation” of the luggage in the cargo hold with the number of passengers on board.

All three airports from which the T.W.A. airlines took off — Cairo, Athens and Rome — meet 1.C.A.0.’s standards. And T.W.A., which was the victim of a hijacking in the Middle East less than a year ago, also had its own, extra, security checks. Yet a bomb, which the experts have said was a plastic explosive, got through. The shortcomings are partly technological. Modern plastic explosives can be detected only with devices that react to their nitrogen content, but these detectors are too expensive for most airports. The metal wiring needed to detonate the plastic can be carried separately and disguised easily. But most failures of . security come from human error. Alert security people, staring at old-

fashioned x-ray screens for no more than 20 minutes at a time, should still be able to spot whatever “different”-looking shape a plastic explosive has been moulded into. The difficulty is to keep low paid people alert while they are performing a deeply boring job.

There are other difficulties. Terrorists can infiltrate the airport’s staff — for example, the aircraft-cleaners (this is a special worry at Cairo airport). Some airport authorities are thinking of installing electronic booths to screen departing passengers and airport workers. The system now being developed will cost around $160,000 a booth, which would be more than made up for by savings in manpower. Another problem is how to screen freight shipments. Israel’s

El Al, for one, puts all cargo -y through a decompression cham-. ■ ber; many airlines delay ship- •; ments for 24 hours to guard against timing devices. What terrifies all airlines is the thought of the terrlorist who checks in an explosive suitcase and still, ready to die, boards the aircraft. The best defence against him (or her) is not stricter security measures alone, . which exasperate passengers and , cost airlines money: it is better intelligence to identify terrorists before they even reach an air-, > port. • < That is also the only realisticway of limiting earthbound ter-' • rorist acts, such as the recent', bombing of a discotheque in West Berlin. a

Copyright — The Economist."