However safe GA thinks it is, just one security oversight could plunge the sector into chaos. It is everyone’s job to stop it happening
Imagine the scenario. A business jet takes off from a small US airport in the early hours of the morning and flies north through the darkness, at low altitude, its transponder turned off, no flight plan filed and no contact with air traffic control. The aircraft crashes in the suburb of a major city. Within hours it is discovered that the jet had been stolen, and in the days that follow the media speculation and political recrimination mount until the five bodies on board are identified not as would-be terrorists but as a joy-riding pilot and his friends.
This could have been the outcome of the alleged theft of a US charter operator’s Cessna Citation VII business jet from St Augustine, Florida on 16 October, just two days before Washington DC’s Reagan National reopened to general aviation – in a very limited way – after a four-year ban following the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. And had the jet not landed safely at Gwinnett, north of Atlanta, Georgia, where the 22-year-old pilot was apprehended and charged, the US GA industry might now be in the grip of the security clampdown it has feared since 9/11.
The GA community, from light private aviation all the way up to heavy-metal business aviation, has been fighting the public and political perception that it is not totally secure since 9/11. The ban from National airport – DCA – and the air-defence identification zone (ADIZ) around the US capital were imposed even though all of the aircraft used in the 11 September attacks were commercial airliners. If a GA aircraft is ever used in a successful, or even attempted, terrorist attack, the consequences will be dire.
Airlines were grounded in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, but were soon flying again because commercial air transport is essential to the US economy. If GA aircraft had been used, what would have happened? Grounding the airlines affected millions of travellers. If GA was grounded or severely restricted would it really only affect a few hundred thousand private flyers and a few thousand chief executives – most of whom it seemed were unwilling to wield their influence with Washington to get GA back into DCA.
Security, like safety, involves perceptions. At the US Federal Aviation Administration’s second annual international aviation safety forum last week, delegates debated the divergence between the worsening public perception of air transport safety and the reality of declining hull loss rates. While the industry works to apply science to safety and make safety a science, the truth is that the public’s reaction to crashes is emotional and irrational and likely to remain that way whatever technical, operational and regulatory progress is made.
Even the nascent private spaceflight industry is grapping with the perception issue as it tries to decide what level of safety must be achieved as it strives to create a viable market to fly thousands of paying passengers into orbit. The pioneers present at the FAA’s safety forum believed the adventurous first passengers would accept there is a risk, but as numbers increase and prices come down the perception would change, bringing political and regulatory pressure to offer airline levels of safety.
Perception is also the problem facing general aviation as it tackles the security issue. No amount of rational argument that light aircraft are too small to inflict substantial damage and business jets are too difficult to steal for use as weapons will ever totally convince the sceptics that GA is secure. Incidents like the alleged Citation theft can only cause harm. And the GA community cannot expect a lot of help from outside, from the public and politicians who see private and business aviation as an exclusive club. The answer lies within.
Just as the delegates at the FAA forum in Washington discussed the importance of developing a pervasive safety culture, of adequate government oversight and enforceable corporate responsibility for aviation safety, general aviation needs to develop a security culture – an awareness at all levels that preventing the use of GA aircraft as terrorist weapons is a shared responsibility. And it is one that must be taken seriously, quickly, before there is an incident that triggers a security scare that shuts down the industry for a very long time.
That is something for operators and owners at next month’s National Business Aviation Association convention to ponder.
Source: Flight International
