Revised security not good enough

[BRUpax]

Having flown several times the past couple of days I'm not too happy about the revised security measures I have encountered and haven't encountered! Some were OTT (over the top) and irrelevant while others were in fact non existant. For obvious reasons I don't want to divulge details of my observations in a public forum, but I would urge those parties responsible to widen the area of increased security beyond that which led to Tuesday's scenario.

[GlueBall]

BRUpax:
It is not possible to bullet-proof society, nor is it a realistic long term measure to choke the world's air transportation system with security overload. It's hard to get into people's minds, and security checks cannot screen suicidal fanatics. A reasonable immediate measure would be to install bullet proof cockpit bulkheads with reinforced steel doors to preclude forced entry.

[Wino]

The only answer is going to be to make the cockpit non accessible from the cabin. This will take time to implement and will not be nearly as expensive as the other interim solutions which include skymarshals. Not only do you have to pay the skymarshals for each and every departure, but you lose 2-3 seats per flight, far more than the space required for an extra lav on the long range planes, and the regional jets can do without a crew lav. I flew Metroliners for years and they never had a lav anywhere in the cabin, eventhough some flights were as much as 2 hours long.

Things are gonna change, and now that an aircraft is recognized as a weapon there is no going back to the way it was.

Wino

[SchoonerBoy]

Have to agree with you BRUpax,

e.g. LAX

No automobile except taxis or buses allowed to deliver passengers to terminals. What exactly this is supposed to prevent is unclear. To close the car parks yes... I can pretty much understand that, but to stop people being dropped off????

The bomb hidden in a suitcase is no more likely to be found because it is arrives with a passenger in a taxi than if it were to arrive with a passenger in a normal car!!!

Come on LAX!!! Why not just enforce a STRICT "no loitering" policy when dropping off passengers like they are doing in Atlanta.

[Apollo]

I agree with Wino. Having the flightdeck in-accessable from the cabin will definately be impossed on future A/C designs. Short term, although I disagree with it, is to have armed, highly trained skymarshals on-board A/C. As for OTT security at airports....It's never to much, for the time being to restore confidence of the flying public that this industry is SAFE. Safer than it has ever been before.

Also, for those of you that do not get CNN, the FBI still believes that there is a present and credible threat of this happening again soon. Terrorists may still be sitting in airport lounges, terminals, and at home waiting to board flights that have been scrubbed.

Let's have overkill for now. It will give passangers piece of mind.

[NorthernSky]

Appollo,

Giving the passengers confidence is precisely the worst thing that we can do.

Careful examination of the risk indicates that effectively preventing access from the cabin to the flight deck may be part of the solution. But, you'd have to prevent lots of other things too:

(i) The possibility of the flight deck crew being shot from the cabin;
(ii) The possibility of anything being introduced into the cabin air which will reach the flight deck;
(iii) The possibility of explosive or certain electronic devices getting into the passenger cabin or other areas and affecting the aircraft or its critical systems;
(iv) The possibility of the aircraft being interfered with by those on the ground (SAM, laser, etc);
(v) The possibility of 'sleeper' agents gaining the necessary qualifications and employment with airlines to put them in the flight deck;
(vi) The possibility of those who have access to the aircraft's deep internal structure being hostile;

Bear in mind that these objectives will have to be achieved worldwide, not just in Europe.

etc.

Extra baggage searching will leave the public content that safety has been improved, and will disrupt a logical and careful progression towards safety.

Anyone care to argue with that?

[ 15 September 2001: Message edited by: NorthernSky ]

[tonyryan]

Wino,

previous hijacks in the seventies were responded to by locking the cockpit door. Then terrorists then just kept putting bullets through the heads of cabin crew until the door was opened. Ask Lufthansa - they found out the hard way.

Locking the door is not going to do it.

As for high impact stunts - the same loss of life could be effected with a smaller aircraft into a football stadium stand any cup final day.

As for weapons - don't the airlines provide an adequate amount of good quality steel knives on board?

[ 15 September 2001: Message edited by: PPRuNe Towers ]

[BRUpax]

Some of you are doing exactly what the authorities seem to be doing, focussing on Tuesday's scenario. Sure, that HAS to be covered but there are also many glaring omissions in "other" areas.

GlueBall I wholeheartedly agree with you. The truth is that sadly it will never be possible to fully eradicate the potential for terrorism. But what I am saying in essence is that there needs to be a more sensible approach to security than the present kneejerk reactions which I have witnessed and which make a mockery of the subject. I'd love to give you some examples to support my claim but I really don't want to divulge anything on an open forum. I intend to express my concerns in writing to the heads of security at the airports concerned.

[SunSeaSandfly]

Northern Sky
Agree with you, perhaps the whole issue needs to be looked at from a different perspective. We need to think of ways of making the payoff to the terrorist undesirable/unpalatable.
I have no idea of how to achieve this but those into psychology might have ideas.
What precisely is the terrorist trying to achieve? Can we make it so that even if he is tactically successful , the strategic outcome is a negative?
We need to explore new concepts.

[Wino]

Tonyryan

I agree with you, that is why there must be no door or access whatsoever to the pax cabin from the cockpit. The onyl access will have to be from OUTSIDE the aircraft on the ground only.

That way, it doesn't matter how many flight attendants they kill, the hijackers can't get into the cockpit and turn the whole aircraft into a weapon. They may still get the crew to fly them somewhere, or they could blow up the aircraft in flight, but they would never again be able to use the aircraft itself as a weapon.

Hijacks would be much harder to carry off. How exactly would a hijacker no they were in london, till they opened the door etc...

Control would always remain with the pilots who could then go back to using their best judgment, without a gun directly in their face...


Wino

[slj]

Brux Pax

Have you told the appropriate authories of the gaps in their airport / airline security?

There are always some blind spots that only come to light when observant passengers like yourself see them.

[yeulb]

The government is considering a closed flight deck door policy and armed guards on flights, these two measures will seriously hamper aviation safety. CRM works it enhances safety on all flights to hinder CRM will lead to many more accidents and in the long term to possible greater loss of life than the tragedy in New York. By introducing armed guards or sky marshalls we might as well remove all airport security checks as we will be providing any possible terrorist the hardware they require on board for them.
If you feel as strongly about these issues as I do may I suggest writing to the Home Office or your MP. We all understand the pros and cons of any future measures in aviation safety and this site proves that there is a strong and varied interest, we must ensure that the powers who will make these decisions are aware of all implications of their decisions.

[shuttlecock]

Gents,

The rules have all changed..gone are the days when you would negotiate patiently with hijackers, safe in the knowledge that you were indispensible. Armed guards on board the aircraft may be unpalatable, but something has to be done to safeguard not only the passengers and crew, but people going about their everyday lives on the ground. We had a warning months ago when a man burst into the cockpit of the BA 744 and tried to take control. The cockpit door Should be locked, and capable of withstanding enough damage to allow the pilots a decent chance of getting the aircraft on the ground somewhere safe.

My thoughts go out to all those who have suffered, and those who are yet to suffer as a result of those murderers.

[Apollo]

Northernsky.......

So, let's not give them confidence that the industry is safe. Let's see the reduced pax loads. Let's see the number of flights reduced 20%. Oops, we know what comes next, yep. Lay-offs. BIG loss of revenue that some smaller carriers will not climb out from. Sure it will bounce back, in time. But at what cost?

Who knows?

[spagiola]

It is said that the military are always preparing to fight the previous war. And when the new one turns out to be very different, they of course get into trouble.

I'm very concerned that the same problem will happen with airline security. All kinds of measures will be taken to prevent an exact repetition of Tuesday's massacre -- and then we'll all be taken by surprise when terrorists do something different. Just like we were this time. We tried to prevent people getting bombs or firearms on board; they didn't bring any. Procedures were geared to the hostage-taking scenario, but this was very different. Unfortunately, terrorists have proven to be imaginative as well as cold-blooded murderers.

The other thing we need to be careful of is not to make other problems worse by 'solving' one problem.

Shooting down hijacked airliners? Hostage-taking will likely remain the main scenario in hijackings -- fortunately, suicidal mass murderers are less common than mass murderers who want to stay alive. Shooting down every hijacked airliner may well kill many people that might be saved. Airliners also can have other problems, such as radio and instrument failures. Imagine an airliner with such a failure, whose route happens to be taking it toward an urban area (quite likely -- that's where airports are). Do we blow it out of the sky? And if you think that's far-fetched, recall the shootdown of the Iran Air A300 in 1988. It didn't even have a radio failure, it was just talking on a different frequency. And it wasn't even off course. Which didn't stop the people manning one of the most sophisticated bits of electronics of the time from interpreting it to be hostile and shooting it down.

Making access to cockpit impossible in flight? Then say goodbye to the pilot who operated the throttles of the Sioux City DC-10 -- a dead-heading pilot who had been sitting in the main cabin and came forward to help the crew when they lost all hydraulics. To the extent that anyone flew that plane, he did.

I don't claim to have the solution. But I do want to warn against over-reacting, or against imagining that our greatest danger at this point is an exact repetition of Tuesday.

[ 16 September 2001: Message edited by: spagiola ]

[10W]

On the face of it, Wino has a solution to counter the horrific events of the last week. But as spagiola has written, the solution to one problem is usually never an improvement across the board and can be detrimental in other areas.

On shooting down airliners, there have been at least half a dozen aircraft coming back over the Atlantic over the last couple of nights who have made initial contact which has then been lost. One business jet was incommunicado for around 45 minutes. Airborne relays, calls on 121.5, SELCAL requests, not one of these was able to raise him. His route to Europe was not far from passing over the RAFs Northern Air Defence station so any shoot down policy would have been pretty quick to implement. Finally getting two-way as he coasted out from the UK he declared he had some 'radio problems' (technical term for volume turned down, radio turned off, or pilot asleep ?) I regret to say that the other 5 aircraft were either United or American Airlines. Sorry guys, but in these heightened times these two airlines are the ones I would expect to be totally on the ball. Other aircraft in the vicinity were communicating OK so I don't think it was a 'technical' problem with the frequencies in use. As you might appreciate, the military are certainly interested in aircraft losing communications these days, especially in the circumstances described. Fortunately two-way was eventually re-established in each case before too many cogs in the system began to turn.

On flight deck access, the BA BAC 1-11 was another classic case where life may have been lost without the cabin crew being able to get in. The Captain was almost sucked out the aircraft via a cockpit window but was held in the aircraft only by one of the male cabin crew until landing.

Wino's idea is certainly worthy of consideration but can't just be looked at in isolation.

[BRUpax]

Good points spagiola and 10W.

On another note, I wonder, had the perpetrators been vetted on check-in, in the same way as international pax are, if they would have been pulled?

[Wino]

Bru,

Most of them wouldn't have been pulled, some were so deep undercover that they had wives and children living with them in Florida for years. This is something that has been years in the making. 20 or 30 stupid questions are never going to feret this sort of crap out as I am sure that they will have rehursed the correct answers to all of the questions...


Cheers
Wino

[Whiskey Zulu]

Excellent post spagiola. We need to be pro-active rather than reactive. Think of each and every way that Aviation security could possibly be compromised and find the preventative medicine before the disease actually hits.

[Dagger Dirk]

Perhaps a slightly longer-term technological solution based on available, reliable and fail-safe technology (that exists today, but not in the airline industry). The Military gave us GPS and it's now indispensable. They have aircraft that now rely upon the systems that I am advocating here:

at this link (http://www.iasa-intl.com/RoboLander.htm)