Airlines at heightened security
After the events of September 11, 2001, I said that in the future, it will be very difficult to take control of or even act against an airliner. Prior to that day, protocol for such situations had universally been to cooperate. After that day, it became clear that crew and passenger action against such people would not just be tolerated but welcomed. That has been true ever since.
It’s a lot harder to take down an airliner than most people realize. Even with bombs. It takes a powerful punch to put a hole into an airframe and, even then, commercial airframes are very strong and an explosion doesn’t necessarily mean that aircraft is automatically coming down. Particularly with respect to today’s airliners.
I’m sure there will be a lot of speculation on how this Nigerian national managed to conceal an explosive device and carry it onboard an aircraft from, of all places, Amsterdam. If you’ve ever traveled from Europe, then you know just how strict security procedures are there and, in particular, in national airline hubs such as Amsterdam, Paris, Frankfort, and London. Right now, it would appear the device was created from items that would nominally pass security although how he concealed PETN explosive sufficiently to pass security remains to be revealed.
I’m equally sure we’ll learn that it was done in a manner that hadn’t received much consideration. Possibly it was that bad a lapse in security but I somehow find that hard to believe. I think we’ll learn something new and then we’ll see another round of procedures against attempts such as this one.
I’m sure we’ll not see the removal of the 3oz. rule for carry-on liquids. Indeed, I wonder if all liquids won’t be banned which potentially causes a huge problem for the airlines since that would likely cause many more passengers to want to check their luggage and airlines are now charging exorbitant fees for such service.
In the meantime, I remain confident that our airlines are safe. If anything, this event is a great demonstration at just how much safer we are today with people acting quickly than we were 10 years ago.
I’ve had the pleasure to sit in on several security seminars with keynote and guest speakers with impressive lists of credentials. Most seem to agree that our current efforts focus on closing gaps after they’ve already been exploited. By the time our security personnel act that vector has been used and the likelihood of it being used again is greatly reduced.
Should we do nothing to close these gaps after the fact? Of course not. The amount of resources (including “PR”) we gave historically spent on such efforts are better used on those gaps not yet exploited; anticipating and acting before it’s too late.