Terrorists could concentrate their activities increasingly on the highly vulnerable supply chain and in particular the air freight industry. This was one of the key warnings experts emphasised during a recent Lufthansa Cargo securityconference in Frankfurt.
“The passenger traffic is well controlled nowadays, which makes it complicated and risky for any possible attacker to pass by explosives, devices or weapons by the x-ray machines and security people to get them on board of an aircraft,” said Harald Zielinski, Lufthansa Cargo’s head of security in his address to the more than 200 participants.
As a consequence terrorists could pick the air freight industry as their preferred target. “Every disturbance of the aviation sector guarantees broad media coverage and the terrorists eagerly need the headlines to get worldwide awareness,” stated Nikolaus Hahn, leading investigator at Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office“Bundeskriminalamt” (BKA).
“The entire aviation sector, as well as the ground infrastructure are very vulnerable and therefore, keep being main targets of Islamic terrorists,” Hahn added. Presently, only three per cent of the entire air freight in Germany is being x-rayed, according to Hahn. “Take a coffin with human remains as only one example of lacking security. Because of reverence reasons they mostly are not x-rayed when transported by air,” he warned.
“But who guarantees that instead of a body there is a bomb placed in the casket,” he asked the stunned audience. This brought Zielinski immediately to the podium assuring that coffins are 100 percent x-rayed at Lufthansa Cargo.
But not all other carriers follow the Lufthansa example for not just caskets, but other cargo as well. The extremely low x-ray figure is partly a consequence of the European bill 2320 of December 2002 which urges every EU member state to set up a security chain starting at the consignor and ending at the consignee’sdoors.
As a consequence it is the agent’s and shipper’s responsibility that every single shipment they produce, pack, pick up, transport, store and hand over to thecarriers at the airports is secure.
“What we are talking about is a pure paper security and thus an illusion, because it is impossible to completely control the entire supply chain and the vast number of individuals involved,” said Martin Sieg, General Manager of Hamburg-based agent Geis SDV as he took a poke at European security.
“You just have to go to one of the inns or service areas along the German Autobahns and you’ll find hundreds of trucks full of air freight with no driver in sight,” he said. “According to laws those loads are secure because they are transportedby a regulated agent”.
Consequently they are not monitored or x-rayed when brought to the airports and passed on to the carriers. “But who guarantees that a terrorist doesn’t smuggle in a bomb and places it on board of the road feeder trucks while standing unobserved at the inns with their drivers sitting in the restaurant and taking theirbreak,” Sieg exclaimed.
He went on to demand the scrapping of the decentralized security system and the known shipper’s as well as regulated agent’s concept completely, which is mandated by the EU for all member states.“It produces a lot of bureaucracy butlittle security,” Sieg criticised. Insteadhe suggested to adapt the well workingpassenger control systems with centralmonitoring of all packages when broughtto the consolidation points of the forwardersand to the airports.
“In that case all shipments would have to pass x-ray machines or go by explosive sniff ers before leaving the airport on board of a plane.”
Sieg conceded however, that his voice will likely have little influence in changing the decentralised security systemproposed by the EU.
Air Cargo General Manager Ed Kelly of the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) confirmed that in three years time every single piece of air freight that will be fl own in the belly hold compartments of passenger aircraft will have to be screened, be it domestic US shipments, imports or exports. Otherwisethe goods will have to be rejected.
“We must do the utmost to prevent any attack and can all only hope that nothing will ever happen, otherwise our industry surely will not be the same any more,” concluded Lufthansa’s Zielinski.