While authorities investigating the crash of Metrojet Flight 9268 have yet to find physical evidence confirming that the plane was indeed brought down by a terrorist bomb, Western intelligence officials believe that the plane was, in all likelihood, felled by an explosive device as it flew over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula late last month. Speculation as to how a bomb could have made it onboard the aircraft has run rampant in the days since the theory was first put forth. Could terrorists have subverted baggage screening technology to sneak a bomb on the plane through checked luggage? Was there a co-conspirator on the inside that could have used their access to plant a device on the aircraft?
The incident has also obviously raised fears in the U.S. about potential security gaps at the nation’s airports that need to be addressed. According to Billie Vincent, a former director of civil aviation security for the Federal Aviation Administration and author of the book, "Bombers, Hijackers, Body Scanners, and Jihadists," believes that the threat posed to commercial airliners by bombs has actually been “under blown” and says the risk of hijacking is much lower by comparison.
“Hijacking is not a major problem. You’re going to have all sorts of reaction from passengers now if you have somebody that’s going to try to hijack an airplane. Bombs are the major problem,” said Vincent, who now serves as president and CEO of consulting firm Aerospace Services International (ASI).
Many people have voiced concerns about inadequate security at Sharm el-Sheikh International Airport where the flight originated, however, Vincent said that it has long been known that the Egyptian government is ineffective at providing a level of airport screening that’s acceptable under Western standards. In fact, Vincent said his predecessor at the FAA imposed a requirement on U.S. carriers flying out of Cairo to rescreen both passengers and baggage after the Egyptian authorities had done so out of an abundance of caution, which is something that he continued during his time with the agency.
“The reason for that was obvious: we didn’t trust their screening,” said Vincent. “It was required because culturally, the Egyptians are not capable of providing effective civil aviation security. The people manning security checkpoints and checking baggage and so forth will defer to any prominent individual (both government officials and well-to-do citizens) and many of them will readily accept bribes to allow people to do things, bypass screening, get an extra bag on, you name it. To me, anyone operating out of anywhere in Egypt is totally foolhardy to rely on Egyptian security.”
In his time at the FAA, Vincent said he was involved in the design and oversight of the implementation of modernized baggage screening systems at three to four major airports. According to Vincent, these systems, which were designed using guidelines from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), U.S. regulations if American jetliners were flying out of the facilities and even regional requirements in some cases, had stringent security requirements they had to meet based, in large part, on the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, along with several other instances in which bombs had been smuggled onto planes with deadly results. More rigorous physical inspections of bags started in the late 1990s and early 2000s as technology that could effectively and reliably screen luggage for explosives became more widely available.
At major international airports outside of the U.S., luggage conveyor systems that are non-airline specific are used to funnel bags through explosive detection systems that can efficiently screen over 1,000 bags an hour. However, in the case of Sharm el-Sheikh, Vincent said they would not have had access to such a sophisticated baggage screening system.
“You run the bags through these things and if there is any suspicion, the bag is routed to a side conveyor and subjected to more rigorous technology examination that is a slower processing piece of equipment, but is a better explosives detector, all the way to the point of physically dissembling whatever is in the bag and checking every last item in the bag,” explained Vincent. “When you get down to the point of having to open the bag and examining each individual item, the technology is extraordinarily good. It boggles the mind at how good it is. But if you cannot get the bag to the technology, have corrupt people or an inadequately designed system; technology won’t do you any good.”
Although there is no 100 percent, foolproof method for being able to prevent insider threats, Vincent said he has urged airports in the past to setup a system that would enable them to screen and inspect their workforce as thoroughly as possible. With that being said, he said that you still cannot put airport employees through the same level of screening that passengers go through for the simple fact that many of them require tools in the performance of their duties that could be deemed as a potential threat. While some are calling for ongoing background screens of airport employees in the wake of the Metrojet crash, Vincent said that simply becomes unwieldy for airports when you consider all the other security factors that they have to take into account on a daily basis.
“Even after you’ve vetted the employee in every way that you conceivably can without bankrupting yourself, you still have to maintain the integrity of that secured area because you’ve got other things coming on and off the airport,” he said. “For example, catering supplies when the caterer is located off the airport grounds and sometimes it’s located on the boundary of the airport. There’s a whole series of security processes and procedures that you implement to make sure that is clean. And then there’s cargo coming on and off the airport that not just goes on cargo planes, but passenger airplanes also. There are a number of things that have to be done. Again, it’s not a trivial thing that can easily be done.”
