Airlines Can't Bear Extra Security Burden Alone, IATA Chief Says
IATA CEO Giovanni Bisignani
Michele Tantussi/Bloomberg
IATA Chief Executive Officer Giovanni Bisignani, seen here, said, “If there are any longer-term adjustments required we must do so with all the facts in hand, with measures targeted to meet specific risks.”
IATA Chief Executive Officer Giovanni Bisignani, seen here, said, “If there are any longer-term adjustments required we must do so with all the facts in hand, with measures targeted to meet specific risks.” Photographer: Michele Tantussi/Bloomberg
Nov. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Rick Nelson, director of the Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, talks about cargo-screening efforts to protect against terrorism following the discovery of explosive devices shipped to the U.S. from Yemen aboard freight aircraft. Nelson talks with Margaret Brennan on Bloomberg Television's "InBusiness." (Source: Bloomberg)
Airlines shouldn’t be made to bear the full burden of extra security measures as governments respond to the discovery of bombs in air-cargo shipments last week, the International Air Transport Association said today.
Responsibility for security must be spread throughout the supply chain, beginning with the manufacturer, and airports shouldn’t be regarded as the first line of defense, IATA Chief Executive Officer Giovanni Bisignani said. Rapid development of technology is also needed to enhance cargo scanning, he said.
“Effective solutions are not developed unilaterally or in haste,” Bisignani said in Frankfurt. “If there are any longer- term adjustments required we must do so with all the facts in hand, with measures targeted to meet specific risks.”
Passenger airlines only now returning to profit after the recession shattered demand for travel would be impacted by stricter security rules because about 42 percent of air cargo is transported as “belly freight” on ordinary aircraft. One of the devices found last week en route from Yemen to Chicago was reportedly carried on two scheduled Qatar Airways Ltd. services.
Security measures cost airlines $5.9 billion a year, based in 2009 figures, Bisignani said in an interview, exceeding the $5.3 billion profit IATA forecasts for the industry in 2011.
“It’s another large fly in the ointment for the aviation industry,” John Strickland, an aviation analyst and director of JLS Consulting Ltd. “Cargo is important for airlines, especially for long-haul flights, so they can’t just stop flying it.”
‘More Secure’
The Bloomberg Asia Pacific Airlines Index dropped 1.9 percent today and the Bloomberg EMEA Airlines Index was rose 1.4 percent. The Bloomberg U.S. Airlines Index was unchanged.
Bisignani said that while there’s “room for improvement,” the aviation industry is now “much more secure” than at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackings in the U.S.
Airlines carried 26 million metric tons of freight last year, equivalent to 35 percent of the total value of goods traded internationally, Bisignani said, with the volume forecast to increase almost 50 percent to 38 million tons by 2014.
There is currently no government-certified technology to screen standard-sized cargo pallets and large items, said Bisignani, who was speaking at IATA’s Avsec 2010 conference, with the new systems that are under development “taking far too long to move from the laboratory to the airport.”
Hand Checks
The X-ray machines that are currently available are fine for scanning trucks and containers in customs searches, but use very high doses of radiation, he said, and pallets must be checked by hand using explosive-detection devices.
The IATA chief said there’s too much emphasis on scanning people and their “belts, shoes and shampoos,” and that the focus of screening must shift “from looking for bad objects to finding terrorists.” That requires the availability of better intelligence and data at airport checkpoints, he said.
Tighter controls will raise transaction costs for air freight and at worst wipe “a couple of percentage points from world trade,” said Fredrik Erixon, director of the European Centre for International Political Economy in Brussels.
The lack of technology to scan pallets means “there are lots of easier ways to attack a plane than putting explosives in your shoe and killing yourself in the process,” he said.
Lufthansa Charges
Deutsche Lufthansa AG, Europe’s second-largest airline and the world’s No. 5 cargo carrier, said it can’t rule out higher surcharges if security requirements are increased.
The Cologne, Germany-based company currently charges 20 cents per kilo in security fees and X-rays all packages from freight handlers that lack official security clearance, while also carrying out random checks even on approved shipments.
“Our X-ray machines are never still,” Lufthansa Cargo spokesman Nils Haupt said by telephone.
Germany would be especially exposed to new security costs because of the economy’s reliance on high-end goods, which are more often transported by air, said Patrick Thiele, a transport commentator at the DIHK chamber of industry and commerce. Imports affected would include food, computer parts and flowers.
“Safety comes first, but it’s clear every new X-ray machine costs money and inevitably it falls to industry,” Thiele said.
The bombs found last week seem to be the work of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the Yemeni branch of the terrorist organization that took credit for the Sept. 11 attacks, John Brennan, President Barack Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, said on Oct. 31. The U.S. has sent a team of experts to Yemen to help bolster the country’s package-screening operation.
Mobile Phone, Timer
U.S. and U.K. officials have said they suspect the bombs were designed to explode on the aircraft. One of the two intercepted packages was set to be detonated by a mobile phone and the other by a timer, said a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing.
Germany and the U.K. have restricted package deliveries from Yemen, with Britain prohibiting some larger printer cartridges from going on flights.
The authorities avoided a human and economic disaster, said Representative Jane Harman, chairwoman of the U.S. House subcommittee on homeland security and intelligence.
“If we had one or two Lockerbie-style explosions, it would certainly have chilled some air travel for a period,” Harman, a California Democrat, said in an interview. The 1988 destruction of a Pan Am plane over Lockerbie, Scotland, killed 270 people.
U.S. Ban Extended
John Pistole, administrator of the U.S. Transportation Security Administration, extended for another week a temporary halt on all cargo coming out of Yemen to the U.S., Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told MSNBC yesterday.
Representative Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who was co-author of a law requiring the screening of all cargo on passenger planes, said he’ll introduce a similar measure for all packages on cargo planes.
Qatar Airways Chief Executive Officer Akbar Al Baker today told reporters in Hanoi that another airline may have carried the package found in Dubai, citing a FedEx. document. Original information was “immature and not properly researched,” he said.
In Asia, South Korea has tightened security checks on cargo originating from Yemen and other countries considered to be dangerous, said Sohn Moon Gap, a customs official. Japan told airlines to follow U.S. regulations and block any U.S.-bound freight from Yemen, said Mitsugu Sato, an official in the Civil Aviation Bureau at the nation’s transport ministry.
Authorities are focusing on Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, the al-Qaeda bomb-maker behind plots to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas Day and to kill the prince spearheading Saudi Arabia’s antiterrorism effort, said a U.S. official, who asked not to be named because the investigation isn’t complete.
More Bombs
Investigators have to presume other devices may still be out there, Brennan told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Oct. 31.
The tip about the bombs on the two cargo planes came from Jabr al-Faifi, a former al-Qaeda member, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported yesterday, citing U.K. officials.
Yemeni sources told the al-Masdar news website yesterday that they doubted al-Faifi was the tipster because he had turned himself in two weeks ago and wasn’t in a position to know the specifics of the bomb plot. Al-Faifi was released from the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and transferred to Saudi Arabia in 2006, a Defense Department spokesman said.
Yemeni security forces on Oct. 31 released a woman, Hanan al-Samawi, who was arrested with her mother on suspicion of attempting to send two parcel bombs.
Al-Qaeda’s organization in Yemen has stepped up violence since June, killing dozens of security personnel in a series of raids in southern cities. The impoverished Arabian Peninsula nation is also battling separatists in the north.
In August, the International Monetary Fund approved a $370 million loan for Yemen aimed at cutting the deficit and reducing poverty. Money “could help a lot in reducing the number of Yemenis and foreigners who are enticed there for terror training and to pick up these bombs,” Harman said.
To contact the reporters on this story: Steven Rothwell in London at srothwell@bloomberg.net; Cornelius Rahn in Frankfurt at crahn2@bloomberg.net; Vivian Salama in Abu Dhabi at vsalama@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kenneth Wong at kwong11@bloomberg.net; Peter Hirschberg at phirschberg@bloomberg.net
Rate this Page