Airport Security 'Still Not Tight Enough'

December 28, 2003

Airport Security 'Still Not Tight Enough' 
The Scotsman, UK


The decision to deploy armed air marshals on some passenger planes is a 
“sensible” step in the fight against terrorism, an expert said today.

Professor Paul Wilkinson, from the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and 
Political Violence at St Andrews University, said al Qaida operatives still 
wanted to target civil aviation.

He told PA News that the move reflected the heightened terrorist threat to 
Britain and the US, where the level of alert was raised shortly before 
Christmas.

“These measures are sensible given the genuinely higher level of threat that 
we are all facing,” he said.

“We are facing a much more severe terrorist problem and that calls for more 
stringent measures than we have been used in the past.”

Sky marshals had been used successfully in other countries such as Israel for 
some time, he said.

But he said security measures at many airports were still not tight enough, 
making on-board security particularly important.

“It they are letting people through who might try to carry out suicide 
hijackings the danger to people on the ground as well as in the air is 
enormous.”

The main threat is from al Qaida and its affiliated organisations, which 
carried out “the most lethal terrorist attacks ever launched in the history 
of modern terrorism” using hijacked planes on September 11.

“It’s not as if they have suddenly veered away from an interest in civil 
aviation, therefore we have to take the threat to civil aviation seriously,” 
he said.

Obvious targets would be on “prestige” routes to capital cities, he added.

“With the higher level of threat, we have to protect against attacks on civil 
aviation and the sky marshals idea is a good one.

“I know that some pilots have been opposed to it and I think that that view 
really has little relevance to the present level of terrorist threat.”
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