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Industry must unite to thwart terror assault
November 1st 2016
At long last the aviation industry is developing a global plan to better combat terror attacks aboard its aircraft and at its airports. Read More »
At the International Air Transport Association’s (IATA) annual AVSEC conference, held last month in Kuala Lumpur, the association’s director general and CEO, Alexandre de Juniac, made a powerful call for governments and the industry to work more closely to combat terror attacks.
Assaults on airlines are not new. They and their passengers have suffered from hijackings to 9/11 and from the downing of passenger aircraft to this year’s ISIS inspired airport bombings.
Sadly, these increasingly frequent attacks illustrate that industry attempts to make their businesses and their passengers secure from terrorist assaults are failing. Not enough is being done to fight terrorism in aviation.
The most important message to emerge from last month’s AVSEC was that all sides now appear committed to working better together. At the conference, IATA’s de Juniac laid out a four principle plan to improve global aviation security.
Importantly, the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) secretary general, Liu Fang, announced at AVSEC that ICAO was developing a global aviation security plan. It was being fast-tracked, she said. A draft is scheduled for completion by May next year, with the goal of putting it before the ICAO council shortly after that.
This could be a problem as ICAO, with 192 member states, is not known for working at speed. So the deadline for ICAO council ratification could be pushed out.
In the meantime, IATA, perhaps emboldened by its success in winning global industry agreement for reducing greenhouse gases, is on the road talking to governments and other stakeholders about a standardized transparent security policy.
Issues to be addressed are rules for overflying conflict zones, improving landside security at airports, identifying insider threats from airline and airport staff, thwarting cyber security assaults and better harmonizing of Passenger Name Record and Advance Passenger Information requirements and airport checkpoints.
It is a big ask. Nevertheless, it is encouraging that for the first time all the interested parties, particularly governments, are prepared to unite in the fight to avoid more loss of life from terror attacks on airlines and at airports.
