Airports' cost cuts are a risk to safety
CLAIRE HARVEY
The Sunday Telegraph
September 04, 2011 12:00AM


WING AND A PRAYER: Experts warn airport security is getting lax

AVIATION security is under massive pressure as airlines and airports slash costs, a top aviation analyst and former boss of Qantas security has warned.

Airports and airlines are squeezing security contractors to provide cheaper X-ray services, meaning cutbacks in training and staffing, warned Geoff Askew, who was head of Security and Emergency Management for the Qantas Group until 2009.

X-ray queues are likely to be longer because of the cutbacks, Mr Askew warned.

"The airlines and airports want a Rolls-Royce but they're only prepared to pay for a second-hand Honda," said Mr Askew, who spent 15 years at Qantas after working with Australian Airlines, Defence and Victoria Police.

"It's a vicious circle about cost management and financial modelling. We can't still continue to test the market for lowest price we'll have a market where people will cut corners, and we'll end up with a very poor outcome."

Sydney Airport, Qantas and X-ray screening contractor SNP Security all dismissed Mr Askew's claims. But the union representing security staff, United Voice, said "unreasonable" cost-pressures were squeezing security operators to profit margins of 2 or 3 per cent forcing them to make staff part-time and tighten rosters.Mr Askew said Qantas is squeezing price-cuts from all suppliers, including security.

Australia's outsourced airline security companies SNP, ISS and MSS were "operating at profit margins that airlines and airports wouldn't even consider," he said.
"Those profit margins have been eroded by this constant testing of the market and going to tender," Mr Askew said.
"They're not going to do it for free, so they'll cut supervisors, the number of hours people are trained. They all blame the global financial crisis.

"That's fine but complacency is one of my biggest fears."

Mark Boyd, United Voice NSW secretary, said across Australia "contractors are on unreasonable margins. You get to the point you've got to ask yourself is it worth doing, but the security industry is so competitive, there will always be contractors to do the work."

Andrew Bartholomew, SNP Security's general manager of aviation security, said SNP had made "efficiencies" to balance staff costs with quality.

A spokesman for Sydney Airport, which is majority owned by former Macquarie Group subsidiary MAp Airports, said security spending has "more than tripled" from $21.2 million in 2001 to $73.3 million last year.
One way to fix the problem was by making airline chief executives personally responsible for airport security, just as they are already responsible for passenger safety in formal licensing documents, Mr Askew said.

"The airlines and airports want a Rolls-Royce but they're only prepared to pay for a second-hand Honda," said Mr Askew, who spent 15 years at Qantas after working with Australian Airlines, Defence and Victoria Police.

"It's a vicious circle about cost management and financial modelling. We can't still continue to test the market for lowest price we'll have a market where people will cut corners, and we'll end up with a very poor outcome."