Airport security has been thrust back into the spotlight several times over the past 12 months, following last year’s suspected bombing of a MetroJet Airbus A321 shortly after take-off from Sharm el-Sheikh and this year’s terrorist attacks at Brussels and Istanbul Ataturk airports.
As a result, security procedures have changed at Brussels airport, with the introduction of passenger screening before the terminal entrance. But security experts and industry bodies argue that such measures serve only to move the target, rather than to prevent would-be terrorists from reaching an airport in the first place.
For this to happen, greater cross-border intelligence- and information-sharing is needed, but there is scepticism over the extent to which this will actually happen.
Two bombs were detonated in the departures area of Brussels airport on 22 March, killing 17 people and injuring more than 80. Flight operations were suspended for nearly two weeks and restarted only after the Belgian government had implemented new security measures requiring all visitors to the airport to pass through a police pre-check before entering the terminal building.
This resulted in large bottlenecks and long delays, so the decision was taken to stop screening everybody and to instead carry out more random pre-checks. Since the systematic pre-screening element was removed, both the airport and its home carrier, Brussels Airlines, say waiting times have reduced significantly.
“During the first days after the reopening of the airport, the pre-screening procedure was seriously impacting the passenger experience. It resulted in long queues and waiting times at the airport entrance gates,” says Brussels Airlines. “Luckily, after some days, all involved stakeholders realised that this initial screening procedure was not workable and an ad-hoc, random pre-screening system was implemented.
“We can say that since that moment the passenger experience has improved drastically. Waiting times are very limited and there are no long queues any more at the airport entrances.”
MINIMAL IMPACT
Brussels airport has been studying the impact of the new procedures on waiting times and concludes that it is low. “We’ve been monitoring the travel time coming from the access road to the airport and through to the gate. The time it takes has not been increased much by the extra security measures – it takes just two to three minutes extra,” the airport says.
Nevertheless, the process of screening people before they enter the terminal building – a measure which is under review but which, the airport suggests, could become permanent – has been heavily criticised by ACI Europe, which believes this merely moves the target rather than securing it.
“There is little doubt that the remaining screening measures at the entrance of airport terminals in Belgium should be removed – they are not adding anything in terms of security,” says ACI Europe director general Olivier Jankovec. “I am reassured that the Belgian government is already moving in that direction and ACI Europe stands ready to assist where needed on the deployment of alternative and more efficient measures. This will allow for better use of existing resources and, last but not least, will actually go a long way in restoring a more positive image of Belgium as an efficient and safe destination.”
The view that moving passenger screening outside the terminal simply shifts the target is shared by Norman Shanks, a visiting professor in aviation security at the UK’s Coventry University, who points out that public areas can “never be 100% protected” against terrorist attacks. However, he argues, detection of threats can be improved with increased surveillance by people who have been specially trained to spot suspicious human behaviours.
However, Shanks believes the cost and responsibility for this should be borne by the airport rather than the local authorities.
“I think it’s the airport’s responsibility because it’s the airport’s property and land. You wouldn’t expect the police to control access to a shopping mall,” he says, adding that all airports “should have security awareness programmes” which include training staff to identify suspicious behaviour.
While airports are “not totally responsible for landside areas”, Shanks believes they “can’t stand back and say it’s all the government’s or police’s responsibility”. Airport security procedures should include “people patrolling the airport, paid for by the airport operator, who are trained to look for telltale signs”, he says, noting that some airports are already doing this. “No technology is going to detect an attack – it’s down to the human eyeball.”
The success or failure of pre-screening procedures comes down to “the quality of the people doing the job”, he says, noting that Sharm el-Sheikh airport in Egypt “had some form of screening [before the terminal entrance] but this was done so poorly it was frankly a waste of time”.
Sharm el-Sheikh hit the headlines on 31 October 2015, when a MetroJet A321 crashed over Sinai shortly after departing the airport for St Petersburg. While the Egyptian inquiry has yet to conclude that the aircraft was brought down by an act of sabotage, Russian authorities and other governments have long suspected that it was caused by an explosive device placed on board.
This has put security procedures at Sharm el-Sheikh under scrutiny, with the UK Foreign Office advising against all but essential air travel to or from the Egyptian holiday resort’s airport.
“We will continue working with the Egyptian authorities to enable regular flights between the UK and Sharm el-Sheikh to resume. We are also liaising with travel companies so that they are able to resume flights and holidays in Sharm el-Sheikh as soon as appropriate security arrangements are in place,” says the Foreign Office in a travel advisory on its website.
ATATURK ATTACK
Scepticism about the effectiveness of screening passengers before entering the terminal building increased on 28 June when a co-ordinated gun and bomb attack near the entrance of Istanbul Ataturk airport claimed the lives of more than 40 people and injured more than 200. The Turkish airport already carried out systematic landside security checks on all passengers and visitors before they entered the terminal, but this did not prevent the atrocity from taking place.
In a statement released the day after the Ataturk attack, ACI Europe’s Jankovec said: “What happened yesterday in Istanbul shows us that the real challenge now is to stop terrorists before they ever reach an airport or any other public space. I cannot reiterate enough – better intelligence and more effective information exchange and co-operation between the competent public authorities needs to become the highest priority.”
But this is easier said than done, as Shanks points out. “Intelligence sharing is what we all strive for, but rarely would [governments] give information to commercial entities such as the airports themselves. What’s best in terms of a longer-term approach is a higher level of surveillance – whether you call it profiling or studying human behaviour.”
However, the word “profiling” has negative connotations because of the risk of certain groups of people being unfairly targeted as a result of their race or nationality. To reduce this risk, Shanks suggests “proper training” is carried out so that airport security personnel are “not looking at colour, race or nationality, but at behaviour”.
Airports could implement a “softer version” of the behavioural detection techniques employed by Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International airport in Israel, which has some of the toughest and most stringent security procedures in the world, says Shanks.
“The Israeli process starts before you get to the airport. Everyone goes through initial questioning and those that fail are pulled aside. But this can only be achieved because of the relatively small number of passengers,” he notes. “All we can do is take some of these behaviour detection techniques.”
The US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has adopted its own version of Tel Aviv’s programme and employs trained behaviour detection officers. However, the Behaviour Detection and Analysis (BDA) programme – formerly known as the Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT) – has come under heavy criticism from civil liberties groups and members of Congress.
In a statement released in July, US Congressman Bennie Thompson – a ranking member of the Committee on Homeland Security – said: “To this day, TSA has yet to provide the scientific validation of the effectiveness of the BDA programme and, unfortunately, the programme is known more for racial and ethnic profiling than detecting terrorist activity. As I have said for some time, the thousands of officers dedicated to this programme could be reassigned to screening operations to address security checkpoint wait times.”
In September, the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted its first-ever aviation security resolution, which states that “more could and should be done to improve aviation security across the world”.
Resolution 2309 calls for “strengthened co-operation and information sharing among states and a requirement that airlines provide advance passenger information to national authorities in order to track the movement of individuals identified by the counter-terrorism committees”.
Against this backdrop, ACI Europe and ACI Asia-Pacific will hold a two-day Security and Crisis Management Special Summit in Brussels in late November. The summit will include keynote addresses from the chief executives of Brussels and Istanbul Ataturk airports, in which they will give “first-hand accounts of this year’s two major airport attacks”, says ACI Europe.
The conference will also focus on landside security, co-operation between technology providers and airport stakeholders, and the threat of radicalised airport employees.
Source: Cirium Dashboard
