Ramon Lopez/WASHINGTON DC
The trial of two Libyans accused of bombing Pan American Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on 21 December, 1988, serves as a backdrop to the US Federal Aviation Administration's continuing efforts to improve aviation security.
Cathal Flynn, the FAA's associate administrator for civil aviation security, says: "The threat to the USA's aviation community has not diminished. It remains a dangerous world." The US General Accounting Office says the risk of terrorism against the USA remains high, and other threats such as "air rage" are on the increase and "could be catastrophic if dangerous objects, such as weapons, were to be involved".
Recent headline-making incidents include:
on 27 July, a man with a pistol stormed past a metal detector onto National Airlines Flight 19 which was boarding passengers. He took the pilot and co-pilot hostage while the passengers aboard the Las Vegas-bound Boeing 757 escaped. He eventually released the flight deck crew then surrendered, ending a five-hour stand-off; the pilot of an All Nippon Airways Boeing 747 was stabbed to death before his attacker was overpowered by the co-pilot and six passengers; in July, Jordanian security agents shot and killed a Syrian hijacker and overpowered three others, but not before a grenade exploded aboard a Royal Jordanian Airbus A320 bound for Damascus. in May, the hijacker of a Philippine Airlines transport was killed after his home-made parachute did not work.The FAA wants to improve the performance of passenger screeners at airport security checkpoints by requiring certification of the companies hired for the job. It is keen to establish uniform standards for screener performance and strengthen training and testing standards for security personnel.
Basic security measures still include walk-through metal detectors for passengers and X-ray screening of hand luggage. Passenger profiling and bag matching have also been brought in.
Explosives detection
The US aviation agency is now deploying an automated screener testing system, called Threat Image Projection (TIP), that runs on the X-ray machines. It randomly projects electronic images of guns, knives and explosive devices onto bags going through the X-ray machines to keep the screeners alert.
The FAA recently awarded three contracts, worth a total of $120 million, to Rapiscan Security Products, PerkinElmer Instruments and Heimann Systems for up to 800 TIP-installed X-ray machines from each company.
The FAA continues to deploy explosives trace detection devices, commonly known as "sniffers", for carry-on items. Barringer Instruments, Ion Track Instruments and Thermedics will each deliver 210 trace devices to the FAA under contracts together worth $50 million.
Meanwhile, L-3 Communications and InVision Technologies provide the FAA with explosives detection systems for checked bags. InVision's CTX-5500 and CTX-9000 and L-3's eXaminer 3DX 6000 employ computed tomography (CAT scan) technology adapted from the medical field.
The FAA has also awarded $9 million to L-3, InVision and PerkinElmer to develop explosives detectors that are one-third the cost of the $1 million machines now used at major US airports to scan checked baggage. The lower-cost devices would be installed at 100 smaller US airports. This is part of the FAA's Argus programme, and the funds will be used to finalise the design of prototypes.
The FAA is still looking at whether positive passenger bag matching using radio frequency (RF) identification systems is viable. Bags are currently tracked through the reading of a bar-coded label with an array of laser scanners. BAE Automated Systems is just one firm working on RF technology for the airline industry.
Current trace devices, which detect residue or vapour from explosives, are hand-operated, but the FAA is developing a trace detector built into a walk-through screening checkpoint, similar to current metal detectors. The security portal might also contain an electromagnetic device that could provide images of items hidden under clothing.
Lyle Malotky, the FAA's scientific adviser for civil aviation security, says: "The US aviation agency is in the process of deploying explosives detectors for checked bags, trace detectors for passenger screenings, and X-ray machines with TIP capabilities. The work will be completed in a few years. They will certainly offer the USA a new level of protection, system-wide."
While the aim is to keep explosive devices out of aircraft overhead luggage bins and cargo holds, the FAA is considering another approach. If bomb detectors cannot be made foolproof, why not make civil transports bombproof?
It is possible to "harden" the entire aircraft, but the obvious drawback is increased weight. An easier solution might be to harden the luggage containers to withstand a bomb blast.
To this end, the FAA is continuing to blow up commercial transports. Encouraged by a test it carried out with the UK Defence Evaluation and Research Agency on a fully pressurised, scrapped Air France Boeing 747-100 at Bruntingthorpe airfield in May 1997, the authority has conducted further evaluations in the USA on surplus widebody and narrowbody passenger aircraft.
Device Detonated
In January 1998, as part of a joint Boeing/ FAA test in Mobile, Alabama, an explosive device placed in a standard aluminium airline cargo container was detonated in a pressurised Lockheed L-1011, blowing the nose off the widebody aircraft. Ken Hacker, who manages the aircraft hardening project at the FAA's technical centre in Atlantic City, New Jersey, says the 747 and L-1011 blasts yielded significant data on the effects of an in-flight explosion in the cargo hold of widebody transports.
The following January in Tucson, Arizona, explosives were detonated in an unpressurised McDonnell Douglas DC-9. The FAA placed bombs in overhead storage compartments, under seats, and in a cargo compartment. Later in 1999, the same tests were carried out on a pressurised Boeing 727 in Tucson.
US and Israeli aviation officials hope to see the effects of an explosion in an 747 overhead cabin storage bin. The planned test, in Israel, which would use a retired El Al aircraft, would conclude the FAA's aircraft vulnerability work.
Earlier this year, the FAA and Tower Air ended a 15-month durability evaluation on 10 blast-attenuating composite/aluminum hybrid cargo containers developed by New Jersey's Galaxy Scientific. The Galaxy container is made of a composite material, GLARE 5, which is made by laminating aluminum alloy sheets with layers of glass fibre-reinforced plastic.
"The Tower Air test was quite successful," says an FAA official. Galaxy provided the agency with 10 more units, which are being evaluated by major US air carriers throughout this year. The project will determine whether there are any problems with the design, while evaluating the durability of the composite materials. "The idea is to put them out there for a while," adds the official. "Let the airlines shove them around for six months to a year. Then blast-test them to see if they failed." The prohibitive cost and heavy weight of the Galaxy containers stand in the way of their everyday use, but Hacker says another unnamed US container manufacturer may have overcome these problems.
The FAA researcher believes hardened containers could have allowed the crew of Pan Am Flight 103 to have completed an emergency landing. Malotky agrees, but is unsure when US regulations mandating the use of hardened containers might be ordered. "As we work with our international partners, we do see a place for hardened containers," he says. "The operational test will put us in a better position to develop new rules, but we're not there yet."
Hacker thinks foreign air carriers, including several in the Middle East, will buy hardened containers regardless of the extra cost and weight. "That's virtually guaranteed," says Malotky.
Source: Flight International
