Pilots strive for common European crew security policy

Flights in Europe are sometimes delayed or cancelled because pilots can not get through security procedures in time, the International Federation of Airline Pilots' Associations reveals.

This is particularly true when pilots encounter non-standard local procedures about which they have no warning.

Now the pilots, tired of the daily hassle associated with negotiating different security procedures in all 27 European Union states just to get to their aircraft, are stepping up a campaign to unify the standards applied across the continent.

IFALPA is aiming to clear up European anomalies relating to flightcrew security checks because, the association says, it is achievable even if it takes a long time.

In the European Commission, pilots have a single institution to deal with, and if they succeed in their objective a European Union standard would influence thinking on global standards for the rest of the world, says IFALPA.

The association's security committee chairman Capt Joachim Puff, a pilot who flies extensive European short-haul operations, explains the current situation: "There are between 70 and 100 different crew identity cards issued in Europe. They are issued by airports, companies and national authorities. It is not unusual for a pilot to hold three of these IDs."

IFALPA confirms that just one of the fundamental problems is that EU states have different government departments in charge of approving or issuing pilot identity cards: these can include transport departments, homeland security agency equivalents, and the police.

The association says one of the biggest standardisation hurdles is that each country has a different idea of what constitutes an acceptable pilot background check. The consequent uncertainty leads to excessive airside security procedures because some countries do not trust the checks carried out on pilots from other EU states.

Puff says: "As pilots we are entrusted with - for example - a Boeing 777 with 160,000kg [352,400lb] of fuel on board. Therefore logic dictates that we should also be trusted to pass through general security procedures with ease, as long as there is a secure method of identifying the pilots as genuine crew."

IFALPA says it is working with airports and airlines to try to devise a unified proposal. Then they can approach the EC about setting up a statutory pilot identity check process and a standard machine-readable identity card that complies with the International Civil Aviation Organisation Annex 9.

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