Category: Lead Editorial

The challenges we face in keeping our airports and aircraft safe and secure are constantly evolving. In the early days of aviation, the most frequently occurring criminal act was the theft of aircraft, often by joyriders or thrill seekers. Since then we have gone through different eras in which aircraft were commandeered to drop political propaganda leaflets, sabotaged for either insurance gain or as a means to murder an individual on board, skyjacked to escape political regimes, hijacked or bombed to ensure worldwide media coverage of the plight of a particular ethnic group, or targeted by suicidal individuals with warped religious ideologies devoid of any clear political message. There have been landmark dates or events – Dawson’s Field, Entebbe, Lockerbie, 9/11, Brussels – which have become enshrined in every aviation security course. So too have the unsuccessful attacks – the shoe bomber, the underpants bomber, the printer toner plot, the liquid explosive plot. The common thread of the events we choose to remember has always been – terrorist acts.

Yet in between these ‘highlights’ are the multitude of other criminal acts, many of which have had equally catastrophic consequences, which, after a few days or weeks, we tend to quickly consign to history or, worse still, dismiss as not being an aviation security issue. Whilst there have been far more aircraft lost as a result of suicidal pilots than suicidal passengers, we pigeonhole the issue as being a safety-related problem. For many in the industry, the Germanwings disaster was the first example they had heard of pilot-assisted suicide – examples from Silkair, Royal Air Maroc and LAM Mozambican Airlines never featuring in any training course. And how quickly we have already forgotten Andreas Lubitz anyway.

Stowaways, hitching rides in the landing gears of aircraft, are just as illustrative of porous airport security as any hijacker managing to infiltrate a weapon through a checkpoint, yet we view these incidents as if we are more concerned for the fact that the stowaway might – and probably will – die, than we do to use the incidents to demand more robust perimeter intrusion detection capabilities.

It is possible that the industry fails to respond because the media does not highlight the security implications. Whilst they will ask how it can possibly be that somebody can get through a security checkpoint with a weapon, when a body falls from an aircraft as it commences its’ final approach, the focus will be on what happens to the human body when exposed to the elements at altitude, the process of the poikilothermic reaction, survival rates and the possibility of a stowaway being conscious as they fall. In other words, headline grabbers. But are we, in the aviation security industry, not better than that?

Whilst I feel sorry for John Baldock, the man who was sunbathing in a garden in south London when a body plummeted 3,500 feet from a Kenya Airways aircraft and landed just beside him, the real story is how the stowaway managed to get on board. And, given that this is the fourth such incident that I am aware of this year, surely the international community should be chomping at the bit to draft new standards to address access control failings. Or do we wait until the item that makes it into the landing gear is an IED rather than a desperate human being?

There is a huge appetite to address cyber vulnerabilities and a will to deploy countermeasures which will respond to the ever-increasing number of drone-related incidents. This is all very welcome. Aside from the terrorist threat, there are certainly economic reasons why these areas must be addressed. This July, British Airways was fined a staggering £183.39 million for allowing, through negligence, hackers to obtain personal data, including payment card details, of around half a million of its customers. And airports from Singapore to London Gatwick and Dubai to Madrid will be able to attest to the impact on airport operations of UAVs illegally entering restricted airspace, let alone, as we are witnessing in Saudi Arabia on an alarmingly regular basis, the potential for weaponised drones to target our airports.

“…the international community should be chomping at the bit to draft new standards to address access control failings…”

The majority of the day-to-day security challenges we face can be addressed through the use of technology. There are, however, notable exceptions.

The escalating number of incidences involving unruly passengers demands a far more robust policy. The airline industry itself is focussing on holding the unruly passenger to account – and so they should be – but they cannot abdicate themselves of their own responsibility to ensure, where possible, that passengers under the influence of excess alcohol are denied boarding. The Montreal Protocol makes no reference to fines that can be levied on carriers for their own dereliction of duty. If an airline can be fined for transporting an inadmissible passenger (who does not have correct travel documentation), why can it not also be fined for permitting loutish behaviour on board?

It might be hard to identify a lone individual who has drunk to excess, but in recent weeks there have been a disturbing number of reports in which large groups of people are alleged to have behaved in completely unacceptable manner on board commercial aircraft, with the low-cost carriers clearly having to clean up their acts. In May, a group of men were filmed drinking beer through a funnel on an easyJet flight from London Stansted to Alicante, allegedly assisted by a flight attendant, and, on a Ryanair flight from Berlin to Majorca, a group of men allegedly performed Nazi salutes and sang racist songs; they even wore clothing with extremist political slogans and were reported for their anti-social activity during the boarding process. In July, mob-like behaviour was witnessed on a Ryanair flight from Manchester to Zadar, Croatia, whilst, on yet another Ryanair flight, a stag party en route to Ibiza, carrying their own alcohol, terrified other passengers. Again, their clothing indicated trouble; they were wearing obscene T-shirts.

I see no reason, as some would like, to ban the sale of alcohol at airports. That penalises the masses for the failings of the few. But, like driving a car, there could be a clearly defined point at which a person is determined to be ‘over the limit’, and, if so, must be denied boarding. Breathalyser test kits at the gate? Why not? It’s all about responsible consumption levels and the only people who will really object are those who do drink to excess and those who are more concerned about the potential loss of revenue from alcohol sales than they are for aircraft safety.

The other area where policy, rather than technology, comes to the fore is in response to the seemingly increasing number of protests being staged at airports. Many of the objectives of the groups involved may be laudable – the climate change group, Extinction Rebellion, being a case in point. But airports are part of the national infrastructure and, in many states, the only gateway to the rest of the world. Consequently, the authorities have a duty to ensure that operations continue unimpeded and there comes a point where a supposedly peaceful protest warrants a more aggressive response. We must all become more environmentally aware, and it may well be the most pressing issue of our time, but that does not warrant action which prevents trade, denies people access to medical care, separates families at times of need and increases the stress levels of passengers, many of whom, are already suffering a battery of anxiety and/or stress-related disorders.

“…the Montreal Protocol makes no reference to fines that can be levied on carriers for their own dereliction of duty…”

One may be sympathetic to the reasons why protesters felt compelled to occupy Hong Kong International Airport, but many of their number were far from ‘peaceful’ as described by the international press and it was incumbent upon the security agencies to maintain control of the territory’s only aerial gateway. It cannot be acceptable for any group to take action which completely grounds flights for a prolonged period of time. Airports are usually very tolerant of small-scale protests, and often facilitate them when groups coordinate responsibly, but there is a disturbing trend towards more aggressive, large-scale actions which could have huge security implications in the years ahead.

Manufacturers and academics have developed highly sophisticated technologies that are capable of identifying many of the quantities of explosives that might have been used to target aircraft in the past. They are also capable of developing viable solutions to address many of our vulnerabilities. But they need to know what we need and it is incumbent upon the international community to set out a vision for the types of solutions we would like to see in place.

Just to take one of the aforementioned challenges – stowaways – as an example; in the age of the miniaturised cameras, CCTV surveillance of landing gears must be feasible at a very low cost? So too the use of heat-sensors. But if we also want to guard against the infiltration of IEDs onto aircraft, then we must also consider virtual fences which can surround an aircraft when it is at the gate or even poised at the end of the runway ready for take-off. Proactive security measures, that do not negatively impact passenger facilitation and which, nowadays, can be delivered at a very reasonable price.

It would be more than reasonable for you to expect the lead editorial in this issue of the international journal of airport and airline security to focus on airport perimeter security. After all, there have been several significant recent incidents highlighting the fallibility of security fences and access control measures; most notably, the heist in Tirana, Albania, on 9 April, which resulted in €5m in cash being stolen by gunmen armed with AK-47s as it was being loaded onto an Austrian Airlines passenger jet bound for Vienna. Also comment-worthy, on 14 April, a man successfully managed to bypass security and secrete himself in the wheel well of an Air France flight at Guadeloupe’s Pointe à Pitre International Airport, and then survived the two-hour flight to French Guyana; if a body can be hidden in the aircraft fuselage, so can a bomb.

But no, I’m afraid I’m opting to be a killjoy and put the world of comedy in the crosshairs. Why? Due to one TV channel-hopping experience which resulted in my watching a BBC2 programme entitled Frankie Boyle’s New World Order. Let me make it clear from the outset that I love satirical humour and, from a UK perspective, it has never been needed more; in the BREXIT (or maybe not!) era, our political elite seem to have completely lost the plot and are deserving of our scorn. I also freely admit that I have a problem with comedians that feel the need to lace every line with an expletive in order to get an extra laugh. I can, however, choose whether to watch a programme. There is plenty on television that I have next to no interest in, and may even be offended by, but I recognise that others could be equally appalled by things that I might enjoy.

“…I am astonished how intelligent, socially responsible and morally well-intended individuals, often in the public eye, freely litter their tweets with either scathing personal attacks…or the ‘ooh, aren’t I clever’ use of obscenities…”

However, there is a point at which we must question whether what is being broadcasted is conducive to the public good. Until 25 April, I had never written to complain about any TV programme and my only previous press complaint related to an article which referenced me – incorrectly citing my views on passenger profiling. However, Frankie Boyle’s puerile, pseudo-intellectual and, most worryingly, potentially dangerous offering changed all that. The standard-form BBC response was predictable: “Comedy is one of the most subjective areas of programming and there is no single set of standards on which the whole of society can agree. While it’s never our intention to offend our audience, it is perhaps inevitable that aspects of our programmes which are acceptable to some will occasionally strike others as distasteful. Our Editorial Guidelines uphold the right to freedom of expression and the right of programme-makers to include material which some members of the audience may find inappropriate or offensive.”

I disagree. In order for me to watch any television in the United Kingdom, I have to pay the BBC a £154.50 licence fee. I have no choice. But whilst it may matter little whether I am a disgruntled customer, it is of far greater significance if our light entertainment programming impacts negatively on behaviour in society. The upmost care and vetting needs to be exercised, especially in the area of comedy – edgy comedy in particular – to ensure that viewers mental health also be considered and material does not fuel the declining respect we see displayed in our everyday lives. Perhaps the editorial guidelines of the BBC should, at the very least, be to “uphold the right to freedom of expression and the right of programme-makers to include material which”, and here I would change it to ‘the majority’ (rather than ‘some’), “members of the audience may find inappropriate or offensive.” Or, in these post-BREXIT referendum days, rather than >50%, I’ll accept a >60% substantial majority view!

We live in a society where we all have to be exceptionally cautious about what we say. As we go about our daily lives, and in the workplace in particular, we have to go overboard to ensure that no remark can be perceived as being homophobic, ageist, racist or prejudiced. Even light-hearted comments, where no individual person was targeted, can result in litigation. We have clamped down on ‘freedom of expression’ and, in doing so, supposedly made tremendous progress in creating a more caring, sensitive and loving society. Until we turn on our televisions or, worse still, enter the world of social media…

Broadcast communication is more offensive than ever. I only dabble with Twitter (referencing this in my last lead editorial), partly as I am astonished how intelligent, socially responsible and morally well-intended individuals, often in the public eye, freely litter their tweets with either scathing personal attacks (we tell children not to say something online that they would not say to a person’s face) or the ‘ooh, aren’t I clever’ use of obscenities.

That’s all well and good if the attacks are truly satirical. Jim Jefferies is a foul-mouthed Australian comic but most of his material is, I think, absolutely fantastic. It is true that his most famous sketch targets supporters of the US Second Amendment and their right “to keep and bear Arms”, and, whilst I might love it, some might find offensive. But it targets a policy, not an individual.

The media has declared open season on Donald Trump. In the next few weeks, as Trump prepares for his State Visit to the United Kingdom, there will be an outpouring of angst and mass protests; in its coverage, the media has a duty to maintain perspective and ensure that a line is drawn between political satire and personal attacks – especially when they relate to physical features, an area in which the US channels are even more culpable of caricature excess than their British counterparts. I return to Frankie Boyle’s programme…

Yes, I thought that the use of expletives seemed puerile; there was the shock factor of using the ‘C’ word (sorry, my publisher won’t allow me to use it!). Yes, I thought that plenty of Boyle’s material was over-the-edgy; ‘joking’ that “I really don’t think I could watch if Trump were assassinated because I’d be [makes reference to sexual gratification] my glasses would fall off” has, I believe, no place on television. You can loathe the man, but not relish the idea of the democratically elected leader of our closest ally being killed on the streets of London.

Boyle has track record; earlier in April, in commenting about Theresa May’s meeting with leading Brexiteers, the BBC sanctioned his remark, “Where the [F-word] are the IRA when you need them?” To joke about a terrorist attack (the bombing of a Brighton hotel by the IRA during the Conservative conference in 1984) is unacceptable at any time, but especially on a state-owned TV network at a time when the Northern Ireland peace process is making the headlines again; was there any consideration that the victims and their loved ones might be watching? Worse still, albeit more historical, Boyle thought it funny to tell a joke on TV (albeit not on the BBC) about supermodel Jordan’s disabled child, saying, “Jordan and Peter Andre are still fighting each other over custody of Harvey – eventually one of them will lose and have to keep him.” Whilst I can at least choose not to watch or not to tune in again, the reality is that the establishment, by permitting this material airtime, contributes to the normalisation of offensive communication.

However, the limit is really reached when ‘humour’ starts to focus on physical attributes. Boyle targeted Trump. Donald Trump can choose his policies but not his looks. He has family members who may not have elected to pursue such a public life. Maybe Trump is easy cannon fodder and embraces his international notoriety, but the same cannot be said for Michael Gove, a prominent member of the current UK Conservative government and potentially the next Prime Minister. The Boyle show ended with a litany of attacks on Gove…all based on his physical appearance and none relating to his politics. And this was where I drew my red line. Like Gove or hate him, no person should ever be subjected to such a torrent of abuse in any circumstances and most certainly not at the expense of BBC licence fee payers. It was not satirical. It was disgusting. The man has a family, who did not put themselves in the public spotlight; for them, such ‘humour’ could have catastrophic consequences. Indeed, they could for anybody who has concerns about their own body image. They are not fair game and, even if I can’t, they certainly don’t need to take it all as a joke.

Rarely a day goes by without the issue of mental health being in the news. The scale of the challenge we face as a society is terrifying and it is incumbent upon our public broadcasters to uphold standards that ensure that we do not fail to encourage people to show respect. If we are trying to be a more politically correct society, the same rules should apply to what appears on our television screens.

“…every three hours the safety of a flight within the EU is threatened by passengers behaving in an unruly or disruptive manner…”

So, what has Frankie Boyle got to do with aviation security? According to the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, in a report published this April, “Every three hours the safety of a flight within the EU is threatened by passengers behaving in an unruly or disruptive manner.” Note that this is just in the EU and only refers to reported incidents. Worldwide the problem is far higher. “At least 70% of these incidents [in the EU] involve some form of aggression”, which is terrifying for the crewmembers and other passengers on board. The problem of unruly passengers is growing at a phenomenal rate and crewmembers are all attesting to the fact that there appears to be an increasing breakdown in discipline. There are multiple reasons for this, and often alcohol is a causal factor, but overall the language used by unruly passengers has plunged to new depths and the respect shown to uniformed personnel who are there for passengers’ safety and security has diminished. Airlines are not immune from criticism, and I am certainly not suggesting that Boyle-style show viewers, and their ilk, are the cause of flight diversions. But the erosion of respect demonstrated on TV and in social media legitimises, and tacitly encourages, the nature of the outbursts the industry witnesses.

“…the erosion of respect demonstrated on TV and in social media legitimises, and tacitly encourages, the nature of the outbursts the industry witnesses…”

Imagine how the flight attendant of an Air India flight to London felt on 11 November 2018 when confronted by the Irish human rights lawyer, Simone Burns. She set out her position, whilst demanding more alcohol, declaring that, “I’m a [expletive] international lawyer” and referred to the crew as “Indian money-grabbing [expletive]”. An educated woman, Burns questioned, “Do you treat business-class passengers like that? Who are international criminal lawyers for the Palestinian people?” and felt that she was sufficiently self-important to be able to claim that, “If I say boycott [expletive] Air India…done!” She was rightly jailed for her tirade, but would the same language have been used a decade or so ago? One-off incidents perhaps, but not, as is now the case, on a daily basis.

Set aside alcohol-driven incidents if you wish, but not outbursts resulting from mental health issues. Airlines are carrying an ever-increasing number of passengers who are taking anti-depressants and who have anxiety-related disorders. All too often, body image issues are a contributory factor. As the retail industry knows only too well, advertisers are having to be more cautious about the portrayal of the ‘body-beautiful’, so surely the least we can expect of our broadcasters is to refrain from ridiculing those whose features are not the most desirable? Those who think that they are just having a bit of fun at the expense of others should be constrained because often that naïve banter can have damaging consequences – in society and, consequently, in the passenger cabins in the skies.

I arrived in New Zealand on 13th March this year ready to deliver a training course based on behavioural analysis techniques. As the aircraft made its final approach, I once again considered how I was going to persuade course delegates that the possibility of a serious attack in New Zealand was to be taken seriously and that geographical location was no defence from those whose hearts were filled with hatred or whose minds were awash with desperate thoughts. Less than two days later, 50 innocent individuals had their lives cut short in two mosques in Christchurch as a result of the actions of one depraved individual who not only wanted to kill but also sought to turn it into an international spectacle by livestreaming his massacre on the internet.

I wish I could say that I was surprised. Horrified yes, but not surprised. Across the globe, we are witnessing similar acts of xenophobia-fuelled terrorism. Perhaps not on the same scale, but the mindset is often the same. And this was a terrorist attack. Any attempt to downplay it and reserve the term ‘terrorism’ almost exclusively for Islamist attacks perpetrated by radicalised individuals also smacks of more than a degree of xenophobia. The Christchurch attacker, whose name New Zealand’s prime minister has elected never to utter, had a political ideology. White supremacists of his ilk are growing in numbers and we need to wake-up to the plague they bring to civilised society.

It is perhaps strange that the two most deadly supremacist attacks of recent years have occurred in countries with relatively small populations at either end of the globe – Christchurch, New Zealand and, in the case of Anders Behring Breivik, in Oslo and Utøya, Norway. Then again, perhaps it is that sense of complacency that allows perpetrators to operate in such locales beneath the radar. That being the case, we need to revisit our concepts of high-risk environments. For airlines, there are no high-risk routes if one considers all the threats to which we are exposed.

“…50 innocent individuals had their lives cut short in two mosques in Christchurch as a result of the actions of one depraved individual…”

Those who have heard me speak at conferences will be familiar with my appeal to the aviation security community to view its remit as going well beyond that of traditional terrorism. But there is huge resistance. There is probably no single reason for this, but I think that our being accustomed to facing the threat of terrorist attacks perpetrated by members of the Muslim faith – both recently in terms of AQ or IS-inspired jihadist attacks and earlier in the form of the Palestinian nationalist hijackings and bombings of the last century – has become the rationale for the war we choose to fight. Don’t get me wrong, that threat has not diminished. The recent collapse of the so-called caliphate and the migration – sometimes homeward-bound – of the defeated foreign fighters poses a terrifying threat given that it was an army rather than an ideology that was defeated. And we would be wrong, therefore, not to consider some locations being more exposed to that threat than others. But we must open our eyes to the xenophobia that exists, both as a result of the fundamentalist attacks and more generally as a result of demographic change inspired by climate change, economic migration and media messaging.

It has become so much easier to hate. I have never been a big user of Twitter but I admit that I have, due to the Brexit debate, found myself following some of the musings of a handful of politicians (including @ZacGoldsmith and @lucianaberger), relatives of renowned politicians (such as @Emily_Benn), journalists (including @freedland and @maitlis), comedians (@JKCorden and, of course, @Baddiel) and aviation security professionals, alongside those academics who effect research in the behavioural analysis field. With a couple of exceptions, it’s not the comments of those I follow that trouble me, rather the responses they receive to their comments and the diatribe in the threads that they follow. I am shocked and saddened to see the vile, disrespectful, racist, anti-Semitic, obscene messages that are expressed by people who are active in local government and who represent supposedly charitable organisations. Disagreement over political issues is no longer a debate – it’s a blinkered, cowardly, foul-mouthed volley of hatred. I’m right. You’re wrong. A forum where we can use language that is unacceptable on the airwaves or in person. I find myself loathing the scum who, hidden away in the comfort of their homes, and often more blatantly, launch personal attacks with complete disregard for the emotional impact that they might be having on others.

What is happening in the United Kingdom is a tragedy, whichever side of the Brexit debate one stands on. We are witnessing a divided society where compromise seems to have little place, respect for the opinion of others has gone out the window and xenophobia reigns supreme. But you don’t have to be British. Across Europe, extreme political agendas are being promulgated and, in the US, the political landscape has never been so polarised and disrespectful of differing opinions.

This all creates a dangerous cocktail where extremism, and even fascism, flourishes and, to a certain extent, is tolerated. Crackdown on livestreaming? No way, that interferes with my rights. Abolish the right to bear arms? How am I to defend myself and my family (without my assault rifle!)? Anti-Semitism becomes mixed up with anti-Zionism. Islamophobia becomes justified. Global village – dream on!

Of course, we are not seeing aircraft being hijacked or blown out of the skies by white supremacists, so it is easy to turn a blind eye. But we are seeing hate crimes perpetrated at our airports, an escalation in the number of serious inflight unruly passenger incidents, an increase in the number of suicides at airports and a litany of insider criminal acts being prosecuted in the courts. In the last two months, we have had at least one act of aircraft-assisted suicide and three hijackings.

We must, of course, avoid knee-jerk responses to incidents such as Christchurch. The threat today is probably no higher than it was on 14th March. True, there could be copycat attacks by emboldened supremacists and yes there could be revenge attacks from the extremes of the Muslim community, but the fact is that we knew before the Christchurch attack that the city was home to the more right-wing elements of New Zealand society. We knew then and know now that there are also those with severe mental health problems who could elect to go out in a blaze of ‘glory’. We saw that with Stephen Paddock in Las Vegas. So, we need to build capabilities into our aviation security system to highlight these people.

“…vile, disrespectful, racist, anti-Semitic, obscene messages that are expressed by people who are active in local government and who represent supposedly charitable organisations…”

This is not about focussing on the person who is perspiring excessively or is seemingly very nervous (of course we should, whilst recognising that there are an abundance of reasons for people to be stressed at airports), but rather to encourage staff to use their senses and identify the change in behaviour of fellow employees, recognise an increased in troubling social media transactions and report concerns about colleagues’ well-being.

There is an argument to suggest that employees’ political affiliations are their own business and nobody else’s. But when the out-of-work rhetoric impacts the mood of those around them and can engender bigoted responses, turning the other cheek may not always be the appropriate response.

Christmas time is supposed to be the season of goodwill to all men, yet it has also, historically, been the period in which there have been a disturbing number of attacks against civil aviation. 21 December marked the 30th anniversary of the loss of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie and it was also the date on which Richard Reid tried to board a flight in Paris with a bomb in his shoes; he did not manage to board due to concerns over his appearance and behaviour, only to return and board the flight the next day when, fortunately, he failed to ignite the fuse. And, of course, it was on Christmas Day itself that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to destroy a Northwest flight en route from Amsterdam to Detroit with a bomb in his underpants. And there are many more examples.

Small wonder then that, when London Gatwick airport had to be closed due to there being multiple sightings of drones over a three-day period in the week leading up to Christmas, one of the concerns was that there had been a deliberate attempt to, at best, disrupt, or, worst-case, attack our civil aviation system. After all, the 1960s-80s were the hijacking era, the 80s to the noughties the bombing era and the last decade has seen authorities have to consider and respond to attacks against aircraft inflight, caused by laser strikes on aircraft cockpits, suicidal pilots (we think of Germanwings and, potentially, the cause of the still unsolved loss of MH370), cyber-related incidents, missiles (MH17)…and drones.

The aim of terrorism is to disrupt our daily lives, and that can be achieved whether or not an attack succeeds. Look at the impact of the liquid explosive plot as an example. And at London Gatwick; the net result of that week’s incident was that tens of thousands of passengers and crew had their Christmas travel plans disrupted, and many did not make it home for family festivities as the industry was already working at capacity at that time of year. If flights are cancelled, there is simply no space on other flights to accommodate all those who want travel.

It is estimated that 300,000 new drones are sold every month. There would have been an abundance of the latest must-have technological gadgets awaiting new owners beneath Christmas trees. The vast majority of users will pilot their aircraft – as that’s what they are – responsibly and adhere to guidelines. Yet there are a disturbing number of incidents of misuse being reported. In the US, the Federal Aviation Administration received in excess of 100 reports per month of drone sightings close to airports and “eleven events involving aircraft having to be manoeuvred out of the way of a drone.” Also in December, an Aeromexico B-737, arriving in Tijuana from Guadalajara, was seemingly hit by a drone and the images (see Air Watch) show just how close a call that flight had with meeting a catastrophic end. Most pilots believe that it’s not a question of if, but when, an aircraft will meet its demise as a result of a drone incident.

Pilots can manoeuvre their way around drones – if they see them in time. But drones are comparatively small and, given the speed at which aircraft fly, there are no guarantees that this will be the case. And whilst they may be small, they are still predominantly constructed out of metallic products. The industry has enough of a problem with bird strikes causing damage to, and failure of, engines. In New York, it is estimated that the authorities kill thousands of birds every year in order to safeguard aircraft from these metal-free organic hazards. Illustrating the threat, one only has to look at the crash of the US Airways flight into the Hudson River when, it is believed, a flock of Canadian geese caused the loss of both engines. Imagine the impact of a drone swarm.

The British Airline Pilots Association is asking the UK government to toughen the penalties for drone misuse, abuse and acts of foolhardiness, and “to create a larger no-fly zone around airports.” I agree, but whilst sentencing and no-fly zones might help prevent hobbyists using drones irresponsibly, they do not address the threat posed by those who intend to target aviation and who care little for what the user guidelines or penalties are.

In 2018, we had the attempted assassination of the Venezuelan president in a drone attack and, in Yemen, we have had Houthi rebels targeting Saudi facilities using drones. In the UK, the security services are using drones to effect better surveillance, but, internationally, the fear is that the more the military and police use the technology, the greater the likelihood of them falling into the hands of those with malicious intent. After all, we only have to look at the original source of weaponry used against our forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.

On the surface, one might consider the primary threat to be the more sophisticated fully-autonomous drones with their ability to hit their targets with millimetre precision and change course depending on the target’s movement and weather conditions. In the wrong hands, they are something to fear, but of greater concern is the huge proliferation of semi-autonomous drones which can be remotely piloted via GPS towards their target. There are also what are known as ‘dumb bombs’ – available to buy for around £200 – where the drone can be piloted by an operator close by. The fear is not only the damage the drone itself can cause to an aircraft, but also what that drone might carry as its payload.

Detonating even a small explosive charge next to an aircraft could have disastrous results, but, even if it fails to destroy it, the climate of fear it would create would be regarded by a terrorist organisation as a success. On the ground, there is understandable concern that drones might be used to target airports, or indeed any location, carrying chemical or biological weaponry.

The ease of access to drones, and their comparative low cost, has made them an attractive tool for terrorist groups. In the same way that we have seen terrorists use vehicles to plough their way into groups of innocent pedestrians, worshippers, revellers and shoppers, so too we are exposed to the risk of people, who may not be suicidal themselves, opting to attack from the skies remotely.

For aviation, we have to consider what can be put in place as a defence. The first challenge is that of detection, and the second is the way in which we intervene when a potential threat is identified.

For detection, our eyes and ears are, as always, not to be discounted, but there is also a range of acoustic, infrared and electro-optical measures on the market. Other vendors, in this rapidly expanding marketplace, are investing their research into a focus on countermeasures. Some of these are high-tech in nature – jamming and spoofing – whilst others are the more visible, traditional solutions. Trials are underway on the use of counter-drones, which can intercept rogue intruders into restricted airspace, falcons (and other birds) which can be trained to fly out and grab an unwelcome drone, and various canon systems that can fire anything from missiles to water.

There’s little doubt that the threat posed by drones is taxing the authorities and concerning pilots, but we must ensure that we do not over-react. There will be incidents, such are the number of drones in circulation but there are also car incidents, and far more of them on the roads, so before you cave in and avoid taking to the skies, do remember that aviation remains the safest form of transport.

Or at least civil aviation is. General aviation still has inherent risks and people prepared to take them. On 21 January this year it would appear that the Emiliano Sala took such a risk when he commissioned the pilot of a Piper PA-46 Malibu to fly him from Nantes to Cardiff following his transfer between French and Welsh football clubs. It was a freezing, dark winter’s night and many within the industry considered it foolhardy to fly a single-engine aircraft across the English Channel in windy conditions. Any problem would lead to a ditching and, in such conditions, survival would be unlikely. As fate would have it, the pilot did have to request permission to descend from 5,000 feet to 2,300 feet, whilst Sala himself was sending WhatsApp voicemails indicating the severity of the situation they found themselves in. Soon after, all contact with the aircraft was lost and Sala never realised his dream of playing in the English Premier League. Cardiff City FC supporters were to mourn the player they never saw play.

“…it is not a question of if, but when, an aircraft will meet its demise as a result of a drone incident…”

Drone incidents, as we have also witnessed in places as far afield as Queenstown and Newark since the Gatwick shutdown, are responded to with an abundance of caution and rightly so. Whilst general aviation does not carry the passenger loads that commercial aviation does, it must also become more risk averse. In the same way that commercial aviation is developing SeMS (security) programmes following the success of SMS (safety) ones, general aviation must also better respond to the emerging security threats facing the aviation industry as a whole. All aircraft face the threat of drones but none more so than those in the general aviation space.

It’s that time of year. As Christmas approaches and a new year beckons, television and radio stations, news networks and social media sites come up with their annual ‘Top 10s’, ‘Best of…’ and ‘Funniest…’ listings and countdowns. So why should we be any different?

Well, this is a serious journal and as such, aside from a few of our Air Watch listings – included to lighten up the mood on an otherwise somewhat dark subject matter – we avoid humour. It wouldn’t be appreciated if we had Aviation Security International’s ‘Top 10 Hijackers’ or ‘Worst Airports for Security’. There may be acceptance of our highlighting the bizarre antics of the world’s unruly passengers, perhaps even grading them for impact, but even there, whilst many of the stories are, with hindsight, amusing, for the crewmembers having to manage the incidents at the time there was little to laugh about.

But in that unruly passenger vein, perhaps we can look at the top causes of frustration? Some, on the surface, may seem trivial, but as more people take to the skies, and our customers and guests become ever more demanding, airports and airlines are going to need to address some of the fundamental irritants. We are often too quick to claim that excessive alcohol consumption or mental health issues are the primary causes of air rage – and they may well be either contributory or primary factors – but that does not excuse us from examining what we, in the aviation and hospitality industries, are doing which may fan the flames of aggression. So here, partly tongue in cheek, but also expressed in all seriousness, are my ‘Top 5 Irritants’ about airports, airlines and hotels. Some have a security angle, others just exemplify the frustrations of a frequent flier.

“…that does not excuse us from examining what we, in the aviation and hospitality industries, are doing which may fan the flames of aggression…”

Airports:

I have always loved the airport experience. They are places full of emotion – the joy of welcoming home long-lost relatives, the sadness of bidding farewell to friends who may never be seen again, the emotionless procession of the business traveller to their gate on yet another lonely journey and the excitement of groups embarking on tours. Parents and children, siblings, lovers, colleagues, team members, crewmembers and even the bereaved. But there are aspects of airport life which I resent.

#1: Let’s start with what we first need when arriving at a terminal with baggage – a baggage trolley. What used to be regarded as a universally free-to-use appliance is, in some locations, now a chargeable service. And one only available to people who have the right currency’s coinage to hand or wish to use a credit card. I’m sorry, it’s part of the service that airports should offer. I use trolleys when they are free, but will rarely do so when I have to pay…and I resent the airports that seem to feel it’s another revenue stream.

#2: Centralised security checkpoints. The industry has moved away from gate screening as the increasing cost of screening technologies, and the staff needed to operate them, made a single centralised checkpoint a more economically viable solution to achieving compliance. Not only do I question the security benefit of centralised screening, where our ability to profile passengers is further diminished, but as a passenger I do resent the lengths of some of the queues (which, of course, can become targets) I’ve had to wait in.

#3: For years we taught people only to walk though an archway metal detector (AMD) after your tray had entered the X-ray machine. There was a risk that others – staff or passengers – could remove something if you did not maintain eye contact with your possessions. That’s now nigh on impossible as we are instructed which tray to load, when to enter the AMD and, having passed through the AMD, and assuming we are not pulled for secondary screening, we then have to scramble to be reunited with our bags, and our protruding wallets, iPhones and wristwatches, before the thieves get their hands on them. Am I exaggerating? Perhaps a little, but if you suffer from tray separation anxiety, it does step up the tension.

#4: Out-of-service biometric passport readers on arrival. You arrive on time and hastily make your way towards immigration only to find that despite there being 24 units in situ, the first 12 have a big red X on them! Fine when there’s no queue, but when there is and the delay is going to result in your being charged extra by your taxi driver for exorbitant car park charges, it’s not so amusing.

And #5: This is probably my biggest bugbear of them all and sadly one which I experience when I arrive at either of the two airports closest to my home. Forcing all cars to park! OK, I get it. No waiting allowed. I would endorse that 100%, but forcing me to pay car park fees is neither customer-focussed nor is it environmentally friendly. It’s just a money spinner. If I call a taxi, or a relative, after I am through immigration, there is no reason why they shouldn’t be able to pick me up without entering the car park. Yes, I know there is a problem with Uber drivers parking in residential streets near airports waiting to be called, and using residents front gardens as toilets (I’m not kidding, it is an issue), but as an airport customer, I feel I am being ripped off. Forcing drivers to enter the car park doesn’t stop them waiting outside. And even when I have been collecting somebody from an airport – somebody who I know is already waiting for me after customs – I see no value in making me drive around in circles through a multi-story car park, with all the added pollution that generates…except, of course, to make the airport money. And that is when I believe we fail; when we deliver no added service, and just appear to be on the take.

“…forcing me to pay car park fees is neither customer-focussed nor is it environmentally friendly. It’s just a money spinner…”

Airlines:

I have always enjoyed the variable experiences offered by the world’s airlines. Little pieces of countries propelling us through the skies to exciting experiences and exposing us to new cultures, where the inflight meal, entertainment, décor and, of course, crewmembers all add to create a novel or trusted experience. I’m a little jaded now, but many airlines do offer that certain je ne sais quoi that enhances a trip. But it’s not all fun.

#1: Flight safety briefings! Obviously necessary and well-intended, but, now so often the subject of comedy skits (and with good reason), it all makes sense until the crew point out the location of the emergency exits…which of course, they don’t! The gesticulating adds little value and, I believe, actually detracts from the image we wish to have of them as safety and security professionals. And then there’s the seatbelt instructions. “Insert the metal end into the buckle”, and “To open lift the buckle cover”. Come on…you go and check everybody has the belt on anyway. Why do we all have to listen to that part? And yet do we really know how to use the life jacket, open the emergency exit or inflate a life raft?

#2: You settle down to watch a movie and then there’s a cabin service announcement. Fair enough. The film restarts and then it stops so that the same announcement can be made in the language of the destination country. And, for some carriers, it’s even repeated a third time as every announcement is made in English, the carrier’s language and the language of the routing. Time we customised each seat’s audio system to the language of the passenger.

#3: Mobile phone policies. Is it dangerous to have your mobile on inflight? If so, please make sure that people have actually turned them off. If it’s not dangerous, then stop telling us to put our phones on airplane mode. On almost every flight I take, I dutifully switch my phone to airplane mode (obviously only when the aircraft is actually about to take off!) whilst those around me may stop actively using them, but do little more. And, on landing, have you heard the cacophony of sound as all these mobile phones re-establish contact with their networks?!

#4: I’m fortunate enough to fly Business Class quite frequently, but my pet hate is the fact that the crew seem to want to draw out my dining experience. I’m working on my laptop – needing to use the tray table – and then along comes the table linen (which I really don’t need), often well before the meal service. And as for clearing the meal tray – even more problematic in Economy – how long does it take? And all the time I am kept penned in. Talk about causing claustrophobic angst.

#5: And, I’m sorry, rightly or wrongly I regard this as an airline responsibility – baggage delivery times are often inexcusably long. And we remember the bad experiences, which are, after all, the last impression the airline leaves us with. Time for an industry-wide maximum delivery time? After all, my taxi’s waiting and I’m paying.

Hotels:

It’s not all about the journey; so much of our trip is based on our accommodation. And hotels have a number of lessons to learn too!

#1: Room keys. Please could you make them out of the same materials they make credit cards from. I actually do need to keep my key by my mobile phone and I really don’t want to have to return to my room after a night out only to have to go down to reception to have my key reprogrammed – and be told off for my failure to ensure separation of phone and key!

#2: I am all in favour of being environmentally friendly, but I am sorry, I just don’t believe that you want me to reuse my towels every day to save the planet. Nor do I want to pay for a service and then be made to feel guilty about the damage I am causing. Does anybody know whether Trump hotels have this policy? After all, isn’t global warming a fallacy?!

#3: Checkout times. Sure, rooms have to be cleaned to accommodate the next guest, but for the guest who checks in late in the evening to have to depart early – in some places 10 or 11am – it makes the whole experience less than restful. It must be possible to have aircrew-style hotel room availability on offer to all?

#4: Porters. No offence, but I hate it when a porter comes to grab my bag from the taxi and insists on taking it to my room so that I can be shown how to use the key and the air conditioning system! Make porters available – absolutely – but don’t force people into situations where they feel duty-bound to tip.

And, for me, #5 is the worst of all and has nothing to do with money. I wear glasses, but not in the shower or the bath. It’s really kind of hotels to provide shampoo, conditioner and shower gel, but why do they have to miniaturise not only the bottle but the print on the bottles to the point that, at the one time I am not wearing my glasses, I have no idea what I am applying to my body!

Sending you seasons greetings for a relaxed, enjoyable, healthy and prosperous new year.

Mr Grumpy

It is all too easy to criticise measures introduced to safeguard civil aviation from acts of unlawful interference. When it comes down to it, we do a pretty good job at protecting the industry, its employees and users. After all there are around 40 million flights every year, and last year more than four billion passengers took to the skies with no lives being lost as a result of criminal activity. There have been skirmishes on the ground that have resulted in fatalities and serious injuries and we certainly have a major challenge to address in terms of unruly passenger behaviour, but we should be satisfied that the security processes, procedures, technologies, checks and balances that we have put in place have only enhanced aviation’s reputation as being the safest form of transport.

Then again, unlike other transportation modes, it only takes one incident for the faith we place in our countermeasures to be shaken to the core. Complacency is often cited as the greatest threat to civil aviation – the belief that we have done what is necessary and/or that the threat has either diminished or that the target has moved on elsewhere. For that reason, we must continue to strive to address emerging threats proactively and question whether the measures we are implementing are really fit for purpose.

We can all cite examples of measures that seem to defy logic. I was checking in for a flight recently and decided to screenshot the following:

This, to me, is an example of measures being taken in the name of security yet, in all honesty, is purely there to cover the airline (and this is now standard practice for many carriers) against any claim. Passengers routinely check in online 24 hours before flight departure, yet how many of them have actually packed their bags at the point in time when they are being asked such ‘security’ questions? The questionnaire forced me to lie as there was not even the option to declare that I had not yet packed my bags! What kind of security measure encourages deception? The baggage control questions were designed to be asked by a screener able to evaluate the way in which the passenger answered the questions, but by striving for total automation we are guilty of dumbing down security to the point of being compliant but not effective. Questions of this nature were designed to identify the duped passenger, or mule, and as such need to be posed at the last possible point in time where the passenger could have become the unwitting infiltrator of an improvised explosive device onto an aircraft.

The same is true for aircraft search procedures. Yes, many aircraft are ‘searched’ prior to passenger boarding but can we, as security professionals, be truly satisfied that the methodology we are using is actually designed to identify prohibited items secreted on board by either an inbound passenger or crewmember or an insider at the airport? If the latter, then the search must, by definition, take place after all other servicing tasks (cleaning, catering etc.) have been completed. And regardless as to who infiltrated the device onto the aircraft, the search, if it’s worth doing it all, must be done comprehensively. Looking in the overhead compartments and beneath a couple of seats is tokenistic at best.

All security measures come at a cost and, as with any business, one has to work within a budget. That is, however, where government has its role to play in ensuring that minimum (I’d prefer to say optimum) standards are met and that airlines and airports are not wasting expenditure on pointless exercises.

In a blue-skies thinking world where we wish to use technology to its best advantage – if the objective is to prevent improvised explosive devices being infiltrated onto aircraft whilst at the same time addressing the insider threat – surely our screening processes should take place on board the aircraft. In our technology wish list, rather than focusing on checkpoint screening technologies, shouldn’t we be asking manufacturers to design systems, which can identify prohibited substances as they are loaded onto aircraft or once they are on board?

Shouldn’t we also be embracing a broader use of canine units for searching aircraft more effectively and efficiently prior to passenger boarding? Shouldn’t we be incorporating security technologies onto aircraft that are designed to identify stowaways, record the actions of unruly passengers and ensure that an aircraft be disabled in the event that it be moved without proper authorisation?

We focus almost excessively on the passenger screening checkpoint, but must now take significant strides towards protecting ourselves from the actions of the insiders – be they mechanics able to power-up aircraft, take off and fly on suicidal missions or airside employees capable of ensuring a prohibited item bypasses security screening – unruly passengers (according to Forbes, “approximately 30 serious ‘unruly passenger’ incidents take place every day over the skies of the United States”), stowaways, and the significant number of people who have mental health issues.

In respect of the latter, perhaps ICAO, which has always been driven to respond to the terrorist threat to civil aviation, should start to focus its proactive measures on devising strategies able to deter and prevent people with mental health illnesses from achieving their goals. Arguably the actions of the likes of Andreas Lubitz (the Germanwings pilot) and Richard Russell (the Horizon Air mechanic) are more likely to be copied in the future than those of the perpetrators of 9/11. We can’t palm this off as being a ‘safety’ concern rather than a ‘security’ remit – negative intent, whatever the cause or justification, is a security challenge.

Some disturbing statistics from the UK illustrate the challenge ahead. According to a 2018 study by the Children’s Society charity, nearly a quarter of girls aged 14 have self-harmed in the past year and nearly 110,000 children aged 14 may have self-harmed across the UK during the same 12-month period, including 76,000 girls and 33,000 boys. These teenagers are tomorrow’s employees. And, according to the mental health charity MIND, “Approximately 1 in 4 people in the UK will experience a mental health problem each year”, and “In England, 1 in 6 people report experiencing a common mental health problem (such as anxiety and depression) in any given week.”

In a 2016 study published by Environmental Health entitled ‘Airplane pilot mental health and suicidal thoughts: a cross-sectional descriptive study via anonymous web-based survey’, it was found that “1837 pilots (52.7%) of the 3485 surveyed pilots completed the survey, and that 193 (13.5%) of 1430 pilots who reported working as an airline pilot in the last seven days at time of survey”, met the depression threshold. “Seventy-five participants (4.1%) reported having suicidal thoughts within the past two weeks.”

Translate those figures into numbers we can better comprehend and we find that equates to “5,700 out of a total of about 140,000 airline pilots worldwide”.

As an ardent proponent of behavioural analysis, I find this a compelling argument for better scrutiny of all who board aircraft by profilers and a very useful statistic to highlight that profiling should not be on racial grounds. Terrorism is, after all, only one of the threats we face. Common sense demands we stop the exclusive focus on the detection of explosives and broaden our scope to fulfil the true objectives of ICAO’s Security Annex 17 to the Convention on International Civil Aviation, that being ‘Safeguarding International Civil Aviation against Acts of Unlawful Interference’, not just the actions of terrorists.

On 30th July, Dr Kok Soo Chon, the investigator in charge of the Malaysian flight MH370 safety investigation, stood before the world’s media and declared that “there was no record of malfunction or defect in the aircraft that could have contributed to the disappearance.”

The statement, made on behalf of the Malaysian government in the aftermath of the cessation of all search activities, was part of the presentation of the latest report into the incident, which is regarded as one of the aviation industry’s greatest mysteries of all time.

The whereabouts of the wreckage are unknown, as are the reasons why MH370 never reached Beijing as planned on 8 March 2014. There has been much speculation over the intervening years, some of which has been wild in nature; many remain convinced that, despite fragments showing up on east African shores, the aircraft is hidden away by either the Russians in Kazakhstan or the Americans in Diego Garcia and that all the passengers and crew are going to emerge unscathed!

The aircraft’s initial movements indicate, as the report states, the likelihood is that “such manoeuvres are due to the systems being manipulated”, or, in other words, as a result of a criminal act.

There remain a multitude of different options in that space: hijacking of the aircraft by a passenger or crewmember, a cyber attack whereby some external, ground-based individual or entity managed to manipulate the controls, or, as is still the most likely scenario as far as I am concerned, pilot suicide.

Whilst the report indicates that there is no evidence that Captain Zaharia Ahmed Shah did indeed hijack his own aircraft and concluded that he had “no conflict issues with friends or family and had shown no signs of social isolation, self-neglect, no abuse of alcohol or drugs, no change of habit or interest, no stress or anxiety was detected in his audio recordings and no signs of significant behavioural changes as observed in the CCTV footage”, there is little doubt that the nature of his activities on his home-based flight simulator, and his YouTube presentations on DIY air-conditioning system repair, were unusual. And, furthermore, the report states that “the turn was made indeed under a manual, not autopilot”, so somebody must have been at the controls. As Geoff Askew writes in his article (on airline alliances) in this issue, there can be “no more tragic example of a possible ‘insider threat’ than the possible hijacking of Malaysian flight MH370 by its own captain”.

However, this still begs the question why, if he were suicidal, Captain Shah didn’t simply crash the aircraft. Why would he have gone to the extent of ensuring that the wreckage would not be discovered for a lengthy period of time, if ever? To ensure that his family are beneficiaries of his life insurance policies and that he be considered as much a victim as all other souls on board? Perhaps.

Or perhaps he was the hijacker, yet not suicidal? Could he have faked his own demise by piloting the aircraft to a remote region of the Indian Ocean and then, DB Cooper style, parachuted from the aircraft leaving it to continue its flight until it ran out of fuel? It is possible that Captain Shah, or indeed another member of the crew, could still be alive enjoying a new life under an assumed identity having been picked up from the ocean by an accomplice. Yes, it’s far-fetched, and a B-777 is not as easy to bail out of as a B-727 (à la Cooper), and he would certainly have had to descend to a low altitude to avoid freezing to death during his fall. Still, a possibility all the same.

Yet the ‘insider threat’ need not be restricted to the crew on board. The report states that, “we cannot exclude the possibility of unlawful interference by a third party.” What if that entity were to have been on board, yet not on the manifest? We know that there has been a detailed analysis into the background of all passengers and crew, but we don’t know for certain whether there were others on board.

As Alexandra James wrote in this journal (in her article on stowaways in April), “123 stowaway attempts have been reported internationally on 107 different flights.” And those are only the reported incidents; who knows how many others have reached their destinations undetected or have fallen from aircraft without anybody ever having known they were there? Most of these stowaways have, after all, hidden in wheel wells of aircraft. Stowaways could, however, also be airport-based employees, or other persons who have gained access to restricted areas of the airport, who have concealed themselves on board. In the case of the B-777 – and I do not think this is in any way far-fetched – in the avionics bay perhaps?

This scenario is one I mooted as a possibility a few days after the loss of MH370. Aircraft mechanics access the bay, yet it is an area of the aircraft that is rarely the subject of a pre-flight search (and, as this is a possible scenario highlighting a weakness in the system, something which should be addressed). From that bay, one has complete access to all the aircraft controls, including the communication systems. From that bay, one could depressurise the aircraft and kill all souls on board before taking control of the aircraft and either piloting it to its demise in the depths of the Indian Ocean or, as aforementioned, parachuting from it at low altitude. Then again, why do so?

An airport or airline employee with mental health issues simply showing it could be done? Or a terrorist group? In the case of the latter, it is of course also a possibility that a person or persons could have concealed themselves in the electronics and engineering bay, cut all aircraft communications and then, perhaps armed, attempted to hijack the aircraft. Perhaps, rather than being the villain of the piece, Captain Shah’s final act was a heroic one trying to save the aircraft?

Until the wreckage is located and a forensic examination of the bodies of those on board is performed, I’m afraid it all continues to be speculation…

I’m not sure about you, but I sense that the aviation security industry has, over the last year or so, been hijacked by the issue of human trafficking. Every conference programme now has either a paper or a workshop dedicated to highlighting the issue of modern day slavery and the role the aviation industry could be taking to stem the tide of human cargo. We are told that the trade in human flesh is now the second most lucrative, and fastest growing, criminal activity in the world and that vulnerable individuals are being transported upon our aircraft to destinations where they may be subject to slave labour, sexual servitude, debt bondage, forced marriage or organ harvesting. According to the International Labour Organisation, 25 million people are trafficked every year. Staggering.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has certainly decided that this is an issue that demands our attention. It has launched its #eyesopen campaign and is urging its members to take steps to educate employees to identify signs that a passenger might be either a trafficked person or, indeed, a trafficker. A powerful video supports the initiative, and guidance materials are being prepared to help airlines develop training modules suited to their route structure.

But this call to action is not being overwhelmingly appreciated by the aviation security departments of airlines and airports. It’s not that they are unsympathetic to the plight of the victims, rather that they question whether, as tragic as the human stories behind each individual might be, it is really the role of the aviation industry to police the problem. After all, we have enough on our plates trying to identify terrorists and criminals who have the intent to commit an act of unlawful interference against the industry. Those who are trafficked might not have legitimate reasons for travel, but equally they do not pose a threat to the flights on which they travel. Airports have security agencies on hand – immigration and customs – whose remit it is to identify people crossing international borders for nefarious purposes or as duped victims; their duties are normally performed by government employees. Guilt tripping airline staff into feeling that they are suddenly responsible for saving those being trafficked is not, according to many I have spoken with, reasonable. It is often viewed in the same way as making airlines culpable for transporting passengers with incorrect travel documentation or malafide passports – just another thing we can bash the industry over the head about and a way to generate additional income from the fines levied.

I have sat through numerous presentations on modern day slavery and my conscience has been pricked numerous times. I had the good fortune to meet Petra Hensley in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, California in September 2013. Petra was the founder of The Sojka Foundation, a non-profit organisation providing help to survivors of human trafficking and working to raise awareness of, and prevent, trafficking in persons (TIP). Petra had herself, as a teenager, been abducted in the Czech Republic and subjected to horrendous violent and sexual abuse, yet had managed to escape. In 2013, by then living in the US, Petra dreamt of becoming a flight attendant (a dream later realised) and introduced me to the work of Airline Ambassadors International (AAI).

AAI, also a non-profit organisation, and one now comprising of some 16,000 airline employees, provides for vulnerable communities by leveraging partnerships with the airline industry. Aside from their involvement in disaster relief and running humanitarian missions, they are at the forefront of the United States’ aviation industry’s efforts to combat TIP and are forging international partnerships. Cue correspondence with the formidable Nancy Rivard and our invitation to AAI to present at our unruly passenger conference (DISPAX World) in London in 2014, and then later at our Inflight Emergency Response event in Riga in 2016 and, again, at Airport Security 2017 in Vienna. AAI has since been asked to present at conferences in Dubai and, this May, at IATA’s Cabin Operations Safety Conference in Bangkok. So, I must hold up my hands and admit my guilt in promulgating the issue…one which is not, on the surface, about aviation security.

There is little doubt that my meeting with Petra Hensley had a huge impact on me, even though she had not been trafficked in the literal sense. Likewise, anybody who has listened to Donna Hubbard – also a survivor of sexual servitude – present on behalf of AAI will attest to the impact of her own story of how she became ensnared by a ‘loved one’ and dragged down into the murky world of prostitution, before emerging and, like Petra, joining the airline industry and becoming a human trafficking awareness trainer. But it was my meeting with Timea Nagy that was the game changer. She had been trafficked. By air. From Hungary to Canada. From freedom to slavery. And we could have stopped it.

I first met Timea in October 2014 at a conference in Toronto organised by Peel Regional Police. For an hour she held the audience – primarily consisting of macho law enforcement officers – spellbound as she told her tale of her fall from being the gregarious daughter of a Hungarian policewoman to a prostitute working cheap tricks in Canadian motel rooms. The story is all too familiar: an advertisement attracting her attention leading to a financed trip to Canada, followed by abduction and years of working to pay off her ever-increasing kidnappers’ costs whilst being threatened with tales as to what would happen to her family back home if she did not comply. In many respects it was just another tragic story of naivety, but the lines that hit home were not the detail of what happened once she had arrived in Canada, but her highlighting the number of times during her journey there that somebody could have intervened…but didn’t.

Timea Nagy exemplifies the problem that IATA and a host of charities and governmental institutions are trying to address. Human trafficking is our problem. Not just because of the guilt trip or our social responsibility, not just so that we can pat ourselves on the back or be the one to save a life, but because trafficking is a criminal activity taking place at our airports and on board our aircraft. We may not be the intended target, but it is our responsibility to ensure that we operate in a crime-free environment with zero tolerance for transporting anybody who does not have a legitimate reason to travel.

Yes, immigration officials should take the lead, but they do not need to work in a silo. The reality is that all airport-based roles of a static nature have their limitations; they can only observe a passenger at a single moment in time. Flight attendants, on the other hand, have the potential to monitor passengers over an extended period. Whilst I am cautious about stereotyping, they also find it easier to buy into the fight against human trafficking than they do counterterrorism. In part, it’s because they do tend to be ‘people people’ who can empathise with the human stories bubbling away beneath the façade, but it’s also because, such is the scale of the human trafficking industry, they know that there is a more than reasonable chance that they might encounter a victim of trafficking in the course of their careers, whereas few actually believe that they will encounter a terrorist.

As an ardent proponent of non-racial profiling, I’ll happily accept any way we can get frontline staff to pay closer attention to passenger behaviour. If the issue of human trafficking engages crew, that’s fantastic news not only in the fight against modern day slavery, but also in our counterterrorist endeavours. If we can start reporting deviations from baseline behaviour, it means we are taking note of the absence of the normal and the presence of the abnormal.

From an airport perspective, the security checkpoint also offers the victim of human trafficking the opportunity – and perhaps a final one – to alert officials as to their plight if they are travelling under duress. But that also requires screeners to be alert to such action.

In May this year, airport screeners in Gothenburg were told to look out for girls who might be trying to signal that they were travelling against their will. Girls fearing that they might be being taken overseas for a forced marriage or female genital mutilation have been advised to conceal a metal spoon in their underwear in order to set off the archway metal detector and then to request a private search to resolve the cause of the alarm. The advice being given in Sweden follows a similar initiative in 2013 in the UK led by British charity Karma Nirvana. Concern is at its highest in the school holidays when young women are more likely to be taken on sudden trips. Whilst family members often present themselves together at immigration counters, the checkpoint is the one place where a girl might be able to speak free of parental interference.

And if none of these arguments convince you to play your role in tackling human trafficking and you really do wish to remain fixated on the terrorist threat, then just remember that terrorism is financed by a host of criminal activities, including trafficking. On a frighteningly regular basis, arrests are made of individuals with links to terrorist groups, including Islamic State, who are actively financing their activities through the trafficking of asylum seekers and the exploitation of other vulnerable individuals.

“…it was my meeting with Timea Nagy that was the game changer. She had been trafficked. By air. From Hungary to Canada. From freedom to slavery. And we could have stopped it….”

At the outset, I said that the industry had been ‘hijacked’ by the issue. If that’s true, then for once I’m happy to be hijacked. We can complain about whose budget it comes out of and that, however important the issue, awareness training should not come at the expense of training in other core security subjects. Airline CEOs that embrace the call to arms must also find and finance the additional time necessary to provide adequate instruction. But we cannot ignore the issue. And speaking of hijacking, if ever there was a topic that has hijacked our agenda, it’s ‘explosive detection’. We complain about one paper on human trafficking surfacing at every meeting yet allow entire conferences to become fixated on the detection of explosives at our screening checkpoints, almost to the exclusion of all other challenges. But that’s a story for another day…