Many US security measures are politically determined, inconsistent and ineffective, and their main effect will be industry damage
It is understandable that the US government should want to provide the best security for its air travellers following the horror of 11 September 2001, and to secure aircraft against being used in the same way again. But in the process of trying to upgrade from nominal security to something credible it is creating dangerous inconsistencies. These often result from policy overkill in one area compared with a dearth of attention in others.
The process as a whole is a classic example of what foreigners see as the stereotypical "American way" of handling shock: reaction without time for thought, throwing massive quantities of money at the problem in the rush to be seen to "do something", and completely failing to look outside its national boundaries to see if it can learn anything from best practice in a world which has faced similar problems for a generation. And, more important in the world's most intrinsically international industry, the USA is also refusing to look abroad to see whether some of the measures it institutes will clash with international law, accepted practice or simple common sense.
Target-setting and lawmaking on the hoof are creating a contrast between policy overkill in some security sectors and serious neglect in others. An example is overkill in some aspects of passenger security, combined with neglect in assessing the efficacy of some of the security measures and equipment adopted. In contrast with the passenger security overkill, there is a serious neglect of cargo security, presumably because air travellers do not see the cargo procedures and most have no idea they are flying with freight containers below their seats.
In issues relating to airborne safety, the same dichotomies either exist or are in the process of being created. One of the latter - uninterruptible transponders - has resulted from ideas conceived within days of 11 September, but it has not been reassessed in the light of all that has happened since. The major European agencies have been warning of the potential for "negative safety" in the US Federal Aviation Administration proposal to mandate transponders that, once selected to the hijack code 7500, cannot be deselected or disabled. The European Civil Aviation Conference, Eurocontrol, and now the Association of European Airlines, argue there are other ways of ensuring that aircraft continue to be trackable on radar after the transponder stops - measures that do not carry the "negative safety" risks embodied in the modified transponder and its associated procedures. For a start, they say, this is an example of policy overkill, because in aircraft which now have locked, reinforced cockpit doors and completely revised crew procedures for dealing with hijack situations, installing hijack-ready, tamper-proof transponders is simply unnecessary. In fact the reinforced cockpit door legislation is the only globally applauded - and adopted - US-originated measure resulting from 11 September because, although it has its disadvantages in affecting cockpit/cabin crew interaction, it is a simple, cost-effective tool for stopping terrorists taking control of an aircraft.
The most obvious of all the legal contradictions and a classic example of policy overkill is the arming of pilots in their fortified cockpits when the USA already fields armed sky marshalls in the cabin. This is being made law in the USA, but the draft proposal for the way the pilots are to transport, carry in flight, and store their firearms is against the law in almost all other countries, so the measure cannot be used on international flights. This measure, then, contains a glaring inconsistency. If it were true that guns in the cockpit were needed, they would be needed on all flights. But the International Civil Aviation Organisation does not want them and has no plans to draw up standards and recommended procedures for the practice, and the International Air Transport Association - of which many of the major US carriers are members - opposes them fiercely. In fact the main advocates of guns in cockpits are US pilots, and their call has been heeded despite the fact that this is not an area of pilot expertise nor a domain in which their lobbying should be allowed to create the law.
This US tendency to play to the gallery when creating security measures, to allow politics to dominate security policy-making and to refuse to review processes in the light of change, is developing a monster that will leech the life out of the industry if it is not tamed.
Source: Flight International
