ONCE again, in an immediate reflex response to the latest attempted suicide bomb attack on an airliner, airport security has been tightened. It is still unclear whether or not the 23-year-old Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, was acting alone. If he is an Al-Qaeda killer, he seems to have been remarkably open with his interrogators. Yet intelligence services are saying he had recently come onto their radar and was on a watch list, though he had not been advanced to the covert schedule of individuals actually banned from flying.
Whatever the truth behind the Dec. 25 attack — and we remember shoe bomber Richard Reid was initially thought a disturbed individual acting alone when he tried to destroy a trans-Atlantic jet almost eight years ago — one unfortunate reality is certain: Air travel has just become even less fun. The challenge now is no longer to spot the suicide bomber who may have items strapped to his or her body or be carrying apparently inoffensive materials which, when combined, become volatile. Now airport security staff are looking for individuals who may be carrying explosives inside their bodies. A recent high-security seminar in Paris actually examined how explosives could be inserted surgically into the stomach and then be detonated by ingesting an activating agent.
Ever since the 2006 Al-Qaeda plot to blow up trans-Atlantic airliners with liquid explosives, manufacturers of security equipment have been working urgently to develop new and better screening technologies. Though high fuel costs, stiff competition and falling passenger numbers mean the airline industry as a whole is struggling to cut costs wherever it can, the one area where airports are still prepared to spend is on security. This is for the simple reason that airports, which fail security audits are now likely to lose their right to clear passengers for prime destinations, not least in North America. Lagos currently finds itself under investigation because the young Nigerian was in transit there as does Amsterdam’s Schipol where Abdul Mutallab boarded the Detroit-bound Delta Airlines flight.
Though check-in passengers are currently experiencing delays of up to four hours, a more considerable impact is being felt among transit passengers the world over. Long gone are the days when travelers filed off one aircraft into a transit lounge and onto another aircraft. Screening and surveillance will now become the norm, even to the extent of watching to see if transit passengers from different flights have pre-arranged rendezvous at which they will exchange and combine otherwise innocent seeming volatile materials. Airlines are also installing cameras in passenger cabins and security personnel are becoming fixtures on many flights.
International travelers are therefore likely to become the most screened, most checked and spied on group of people outside a war zone — except unfortunately that air transport has in reality become a war zone in which the casualties will always be innocent victims. Therefore though we may deeply regret all the new security restrictions that have become a part of flying, we must accept that they are a necessary defense against a ruthless enemy.
