Air Security International

[punkalouver]

Does anybody out there use this company on their international flights? I picked up a brochure of theirs at a trade show and thet seem like a company to talk to when flying into strange places around the world.
But, when I look at their world threat map for the fall of 2005, there are what I think are innaccuracies. Each country has one of five colours for a threat level from very low to very high. Of course some like Colombia and Pakistan are red for very high. The lowest? Greenland and Iceland. But, Israel and Egypt are only rated medium which is lower than they should be in my opinion. North Korea which has to be the most unlikely place to get mugged or have a terrorist attack is rated high. South Africa which has the highest murder rate and probably rape rate in the world is medium just like Australia. Is politics or political correctness involved with this map?

[TexasLondon]

Relayed through our London Office:-


I came across your posting and wanted to take the opportunity to respond personally to your questions regarding our threat rating system. The threat ratings are constantly evaluated and updated by our team of Intelligence analysts. This risk assessment in determined by collectively evaluating multiple indicators that can affect any level of safety and security for both travelers and residents of a designated location. These indicators include, but are not limited to:

Crime, Demonstrations – Protests, Civil Unrest, Espionage, Ethnic Conflict, Kidnapping, Elections, Political Tension, Sectarian conflict, Terrorism, Open Military Conflict (war, insurgency).

Let me note that we make a distinction in threat levels between those for individual cities, versus the overall country, and this often leads to questions similar to yours. For instance, with regard to South Africa, we do evaluate the country threat rating as (3-Medium) but evaluate the threat rating for the cities of Johannesburg and Cape Town as (4-High) precisely for the reasons you outlined in terms of high crime and violent crime rates. Similarly, the threat rating for North Korea is (4-High) due more to the extreme political situation and espionage concerns, rather than crime and terrorism. We do agree that Egypt has more threat issues than other similarly rated countries – and frankly we did consider raising that level after the last terrorist attack in Sharm el-Sheikh, but did not, evaluating that incident as significant, but as yet not representing a sustained pattern of attacks throughout the country. In turn, we would rate the threats for locations in the Sinai Peninsula as (4-High) due to the attacks that we have seen in that part of Egypt in the last two years. I would also like to clarify that we evaluate Israel and its primary cities as threat level (4-high).

I assure you that we make every effort to keep our intelligence evaluations non-political.


Thank you for your questions and your time.

Best regards,


Charlie LeBlanc
VP – Operations
Air Security International, L.P.