The threats to aviation security

Aviation security has become ever more important over the past century as air travel has grown from a small, exclusive service to a massive industry serving the entire globe.

Given its inherently international nature, civil aviation has always carried a risk of exploitation by criminal elements. The opportunity for trafficking contrabrand such as drugs, stolen goods or counterfeit money has always existed and preventing this has taken certain steps. At one point, this was relatively easy as very few people outside of government agencies or the extremely wealthy could expect to make a flight - but since the early days of aviation after the second world war, air travel has opened up to millions if not billions of people around the word, presenting new challenges and sadly, new threats.

It is commonly recognised that today, the main threat to the air industry and its customers is terrorism. The international aspect of air travel has made it a key target for those seeking to influence the international stage through direct action - and the incredible scale of the modern air industry makes it a natural target for those seeking to cause the most damage to the most people with the least effort.

In the early days of the commercial airlines, this threat was predominantly in the form of hijacking - where one or more passengers on the plane unlawfully seize control of an aircraft.

Sometimes this has been conducted by fugitives desperate to flee to an overseas destination but usually it is to hold the other passengers to ransom for monetary gain, political concessions or to gain a public platform for their grievances. Once a plane has been hijacked, the passengers are in extreme danger and the authorities have only two options - negotiation or armed intervention.

However hijackers are invariably outnumbered by the crew and the passengers and to take control of a plane, they usually need some form of weaponry. This is one of the areas where aviation security has helped to minimise the risk of hijacking, with advances in technology making it near impossible to smuggle on weapons such as knives or firearms for some time. In fact for some time the major threat of hijacking for most countries in the developed world has been from hijackers using improvised weapons - or from when they can convince others that they possess an explosive device.

The explosive device brings us to the modern threat of terrorism to air travel, responsible for a greater tightening of aviation security than arguably any other factor. As mentioned sometimes explosive devices are used as leverage to compel passengers and authorities to comply with a hijacker - but the major concern is that they are all too frequently used simply to kill people indiscriminately for political or religious motivations.

This threat became a reality for the first time in 1976 when Cubana Flight 455 exploded in mid air on a flight to Jamaica from Barbados. 73 people were killed, a number which was sadly dwarfed in 1985 when failure to detect an on-board bomb led to the deaths of 329 people when the larger Air India Flight 182 exploded above the Atlantic Ocean.

Variations on these methods have been seen throughout the latter half of the 20th century and have continued into the 21st. Following the horrific incidents of September 11 when aircraft hijackers killed some 3,000 people in a suicide attack on the US and the subsequent (largely failed) attempts at bombing attacks inspired by the event, aviation security is more prevalent, well-equipped and alert than ever.

Passengers face ever tighter restrictions on what can and can't be taken into either hand luggage or haulage; security screening takes place before access to any airport terminal; security staff conduct random searches; some airports even have behavioural profiling technology built into their CCTV systems - and despite the threats, every day millions of people around the world refuse to be deterred by the threat and place their faith in airport security every day.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/business-articles/the-threats-to-aviation-security-3647785.html

Andrew Marshal is freelance consultant of Security Systems Integrator. While working on this he has gathered knowledge on security products. Visit: http://www.wi-ltd.com/ for more information and services.