Airline group questions latest security measures

KUALA LUMPUR – A regional airline association has questioned the effectiveness of the latest airport security measures introduced following the Christmas Day attempt to blow up an aircraft in the United States.

The Association of Asia Pacific Airlines said that treating each of the six million passengers who fly every day as potential terrorists and subjecting them to virtual strip searches and pat-downs “already borders on the absurd, particularly when compared to our approach to public security in other aspects of our daily lives”.

“Doing so comes at a cost, already measured in tens of billions of dollars annually.”

AAPA continued, “Whilst new screening technologies are constantly under evaluation, including full body scanners and automatic explosive detection systems, there is insufficient evidence regarding their effectiveness to justify their immediate deployment, not to mention unresolved health and privacy issues.

“The current debate on the merits or otherwise of passenger profiling raises a number of other important issues of fairness and preservation of human dignity, given the fact that 99.99 percent of passengers, even from supposedly higher risk categories, are entirely innocent.

“Rather than focus on ever more intrusive passenger screening, the key lesson from this, and previous terrorist incidents, is the critical importance of effective intelligence gathering and analysis.

“Clearly, both inter-agency and inter-governmental cooperation needs to be reinforced.”

Commenting on the current state of affairs, Andrew Herdman, director general of the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines said,
“Despite recent events, public confidence in the safety of air travel remains high.

“Good security is all about comprehensive threat assessment and balanced risk management, not the elimination of every conceivable risk.”

However, he cautioned, “It would be a tragedy if that confidence were to be undermined by ill-judged reactionary measures being taken by those entrusted with maintaining public safety.

“The sudden introduction by national governments of uncoordinated new security requirements, without prior consultation, makes practical implementation difficult.

“The fact that such requirements are unpublished, and even in some cases unwritten, inevitably leads to inconsistency of application.

“Far from reassuring passengers, the likely result is further confusion and unnecessary inconvenience.”