Aviation security remains weak link

The starting of no-frills airlines and the consequent sharp increase in the passenger traffic has weakened security at the airports, experts said here on Thursday.

"The rapid increase in the passenger traffic and the consequent increase in the pressure on the security personnel is making monitoring of the passengers more difficult. A good number of them are seen to have a deviant behaviour," said an industry expert at the Aerodrome India 2005.

The possibility of a terrorist slipping through is extremely high, according to the expert. Security measures like a scanner to detect weapons, explosives and other metal objects, and frisking may not be of much help in checking passengers from making it through with a plastic bomb.

Technology alone cannot ensure the safety and security or prevent terrorist attacks, said Ilan Paul Weinmann, manager-training and personnel support department, ICTS Europe Holdings B V, an international aviation security firm based out of Netherlands.

As technologies advance in preventing terrorism, so the terrorists change the modus operandi, he said while speaking on "Trends and developments in international aviation safety and security," organised as part of the Aerodrome India 2005.

International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) defines objectives of aviation security as "the safety of passengers, crew, ground personnel and the general public in all matters related to safeguarding acts of unlawful interference with civil aviation", said P Mohanan, regional deputy commissioner of security, bureau of civil aviation security (Western Region).

Keeping the basic objective in view, India has developed its aviation security programme over the years to meet the challenges of the day.

"In India we always try to keep pace with the ICAO guidelines on international co-operation in the areas of special security measures, exchange of information on threats, training, protection, protection of information and exchange of views," said Mohanan.

India has had to deal with hijacking of aircraft that started on January 30, 1971, when brothers Hashim and Ashraf Quereshi of the Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front, armed with a pistol and a hand grenade, hijacked Ganga, a Fokker Friendship aircraft of the Indian Airlines (IA).

The flight had taken off from Srinagar for Jammu and the pilot was forced to take it to Lahore. This was the first hijacking of an Indian aircraft and it woke the Indian authorities to the menace of terrorism in airports.

The explosion of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in December 1988 and September 11, 2001 attack on World Trade Centre in New York were formative years in the history of terrorism and major landmarks in the struggle against terrorism.