Since 11 September the US government has taken over responsibility for providing aviation security. Should Europe follow suit?
The European Union's parliament has recommended that EU states adopt a co-ordinated policy for financing aviation security improvements. This will almost certainly fall on deaf ears at the Council of Ministers in June. But should it?
Parliament's premise is that the EU states have agreed to impose higher standards on the industry, so the states should pay for the upgrade. Parliament seems to hold to the underlying belief - which is current in the USA - that 11 September has put the air travel industry in the front line of a global battle that is not of their making.
At the executive level, government thinking either side of the Atlantic, as it stands today, is radically different. But if the threat is global, why should it be different?
First, the USA was the country that actually suffered the 11 September atrocity, and the degree of trauma the nation has suffered should not be underestimated. Second, that attack was quite evidently aimed at the USA, not at the world nor even the "Western" world. Third, before 11 September the USA had an air transport security system that manifested a low government risk assessment of the likelihood of conventional terrorist attacks against aviation - meaning sabotage or "traditional" hijack. Europe's security system, while being far from perfect, was set according to a higher risk assessment.
While the USA is still coming to terms with that trauma, its government is taking decisions which differ from those its normal free-market philosophy would dictate. For example, although since the 1970s US airliners have several times been hijacked and blown up in flight by groups with a political agenda, the government's policy did not change until11 September.
Before then it had been the airline's job to protect their businesses and maintain the confidence of their passengers. The state's job was simply to set minimum industry security standards to protect US citizens. There is - or was - an almost exact parallel with the job of the Federal Aviation Administration - if the FAA required safety improvements to aircraft, the airlines, not the state, would pay for implementing them.
The difference now, in the USA, is that the country sees itself as being on a war footing. It is at war with world terrorism. So far, the only terrorist act sufficient to "rouse the sleeping giant", is the 11 September attack on two iconic targets on USA territory. None of the European states considers itself to be in the same situation right now.
There is another difference - the shock waves from the attack on the USA may have hit the rest of the world, but it is the US air transport industry that has been hardest hit. There is a case for saying that the US airline industry, in anything like the shape it had before the attack, would have been doomed had the government not stepped in. Even now there may be radical changes. The federalisation of security was seen as the only measure that might reassure air travellers. The fear of permanent damage to the US air transport industry was a powerful motive for US government intervention.
To understand what happens from here it is necessary to look at the possibilities. If there are no more terrorist shocks for several years, will the USA be able to - or want to - continue to support its massive state-owned aviation security system? Will the system, funded probably by ever-increasing travel taxes, turn out to be any more efficient - even if better equipped - than the privatised system it replaced? And if the terrorists were to switch targets and conduct a successful series of attacks on roads, railways, subway systems, or the electricity generating industry - will US citizens call for the same level of intensive state security provision for these sectors that only aviation - and the nuclear industry - has, so far, been given?
It is easy to see why the EU governments, especially while they still do not perceive themselves as being at the same risk as the USA, are fighting shy of taking over air transport industry security provision. They don't want to get involved in providing for one sector, because that would set a precedent on which they would not be able to deliver if other sectors were targeted.
Since they are clearly not going to get sucked into what they see as a black hole, the job of government is to provide vastly improved intelligence services that identify, track and immobilise those who would harm, not just civil aviation, but civilisation.
Source: Flight International
