Bomb hoax shuts down float planes
Airline has no plans to start screening passengers or bags, company exec says
Cindy E. Harnett, Times Colonist
Published: Thursday, September 27, 2007
A bomb threat that shut down Harbour Air seaplane service for four hours yesterday turned out to be a hoax -- but just last month a Liberal senator visiting Victoria warned the security threat in our Inner Harbour is real.
Yet as 40 flights were grounded in Victoria, Nanaimo, Richmond and Langley and hundreds of travellers were stranded on the docks yesterday, Randy Wright, senior vice-president of Harbour Air Seaplanes, said he has no plans to start screening passengers or bags.
"Everything is grounded," Wright said yesterday morning after a bomb threat was called into a Richmond call-centre reservations line around 7 a.m. about a Harbour Air plane in Vancouver.
"Safety is our No. 1 priority," Wright said. "We take every precaution. We want to make sure our customers are safe. The threat was in Vancouver but we're checking every one of our bases and aircraft."
Victoria and Langley police departments, Richmond RCMP, Harbour Air and Transport Canada were all investigating the security threat. Bomb-sniffer dogs were brought in to search the grounded planes and docks, and the water was also searched. In Langley, the airport search forced the temporary lockdown of Langley Senior Secondary school next door.
Planes didn't resume flying until about 11 a.m. after the threat was deemed a hoax. It's the first bomb threat the company has received in its 25-year history. B.C. Ferries has had two such threats in recent months.
But just last month, Liberal Senator Colin Kenny said that B.C.'s coastal transportation systems are wide open to terrorist attacks, and singled out seaplanes as an area that needs a boost in security.
"These aircraft take off fully loaded very close to buildings and there's just zero reaction time," he said at the time.
Kenny, who headed a Senate committee on national security and defence that issued a report in March highly critical of the country's coastline security, conceded that instituting airport-like passenger and bag checks on B.C. Ferries isn't practical, but said it is feasible for float planes, and should be done.
Wright maintains that float planes are slow, carry few passengers and little fuel and are an unlikely target for terrorists.
Sitting grounded in Victoria yesterday morning, a trio of businessmen bound for Vancouver had breakfast and weighed in on the security debate.
Victoria's Jake Duraan said he enjoys the convenience of hopping on a float plane without the time-consuming and sometimes bothersome security checks required at larger airports, "and on the other hand I want to be safe," he said. "I'm on the fence."
Steve Hiley believes there's a bigger threat of terrorism on B.C. Ferries vessels leaving from Victoria and Nanaimo: "That could take out 2,000 people like that," he said, clicking his fingers.
Al Brown, of Mill Bay, agreed he's more concerned about people driving their vehicles, unchecked, onto ferries. "They are much bigger targets than float planes," Brown said.
Terrorists likely aren't interested in taking out a small plane in a small harbour, he said. "It wouldn't have an international impact."
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