"Look for suspicious passengers, not suspicious luggage, Canadian pilots say"

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Airport security should focus on high-risk passengers: pilots
By Kim Bolan
Canada - The Vancouver Sun


Canada should implement a registered air travellers program that would allow
some low-risk passengers to more easily pass through the country's airports,
the Air India inquiry heard Tuesday.

Two representatives of the Air Line Pilots Association International said
that it is ineffective and expensive to treat all airline passengers as if
they pose the same threat when they are screened at airports.

"By taking out non-threat individuals and providing them with an expedited
way, we can reallocate resources to other areas that are more threatening to
us," Edmonton-based pilot Craig Hall told Commissioner John Major in Ottawa.

We don't believe that a one-size-fits-all cookie cutter approach to security
screening, that treats a member of Parliament at the same level of risk as a
federal prison parolee, is appropriate."

Hall and fellow pilot and former Mountie Jean Labbe testified that the
Canadian Air Transport Security Authority should have expanded power to
implement the program.

"CATSA currently does not have any mandate to do that," Mr. Hall said.

Their association supports behavioural profiling being used to weed out
suspicious travellers, but they stressed it is not "racial profiling."

"Observing how people act, observing their demeanour, can be a very useful
tool," Mr. Hall said.

He said Israel's main airline has used the technique for years with great
success, even preventing an imminent bombing.

The inquiry resumed Tuesday after a short break and is revisiting the issue
of airport security. Already Mr. Major has heard weeks of evidence on what
has been done to close the security gaps that existed in June, 1985,
allowing two bomb-laden suitcases to be checked in at Vancouver
International Airport.

The resulting explosions killed 331 people in Canada's largest terrorist
attack and mass murder.

A recent submission the pilot association made to a CATSA review panel was
entered as an exhibit at the inquiry.

In it, the group says pilots who are already subjected to rigorous screening
as part of their employment should be treated differently than other
passengers.

"For our part, professional pilots, rather than being treated as a valuable
resource and team member in security, have essentially been treated as part
of the problem. This is not only ineffective and inefficient, but demeaning
and insulting. There is no other issue on which pilots are more unified than
that of the need to replace physical screening with electronic identity
verification and controlled access to airport secured areas for pilots,
whose background and criminal history records have been checked," the
document said.

"The current security screening system virtually ignores the trustworthiness
of airline pilots and others, but instead focuses almost exclusively on a
search for objects. Unless and until the system becomes more human-centred,
rather than weapon-centred, we will remain vulnerable to potential
hijackings and other aircraft attacks.

"It is an unfortunate reality that trained terrorists do not need weapons to
perpetrate crimes aboard aircraft."

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