MURDO MORRISON / ATHENS
The European Commission is set to publish a draft policy on aviation security, laying down what airlines, airports and governments should pay and their responsibilities.
The study by the energy and transport directorate into the costs of deterring terrorists following 11 September will be sent to European Union transport ministers and members of Parliament in January. The report - based on a survey of member states and industry by the Irish Aviation Authority and using US experience as a "yardstick" - will propose "three or four options", says Robert Missen, the Commission's principal administrator for aviation security.
These could range from "total intervention by states in financing security to no intervention at all, with industry picking up the bill", but are likely to be "somewhere between the two extremes", Missen said at the Avsec conference in Athens last week. Ministers and Parliament are likely to take a final decision during 2004.
Al-Qaeda will almost certainly again use man-portable air defence systems (manpads) to target airliners and is constantly gathering intelligence at airports for weak links, warns terrorism expert Professor Paul Wilkinson of St Andrews University in the UK.
He told the Avsec conference there was still "incredible complacency" and an industry attitude of "it's not going to happen to us".
Mombasa, in Kenya, where al-Qaeda launched an unsuccessful attack on an Israeli airliner last November, was "not the last time they will use this method to attack civil aircraft".
Industry, he says, "cannot afford to get stuck in sterile debates about who does what. There needs to be co-operation between public and private sector." But, he adds: "High-quality surveillance and international co-operation is still the real key to taking on terrorism."
Flight International is hosting a conference on anti-manpads protection on civil aircraft in Washington DC on 28 January. Contact sallie.edwards@rbi.co.uk
Source: Flight International
