Security in the Skies

While every headline in Europe talks about the disastrous winter, American headlines have tended to reference recent episodes of trouble in the skies or trouble at airports.

I watched with astonishment this week as the story of how explosives ended up on a plane to Dublin unravelled. But more about that later. Following the Christmas Day attempt to blow up a Detroit bound plane,Americans are clearly rattled and panic stations are engaged again. Stories of planes turning back due to 'disruptive passengers' keep surfacing and notably, most of these 'disruptive' passengers are just ones who refuse to come out of the bathroom (probably for a good natural reason!).

But the story of the week here centered on a weekend security breach at Newark airport, in New Jersey. It's hard to tell who exactly should be scolded in this story.. the guy who went into an area he knew he shouldn't or the security guard who left his post and facilitated the man in doing so. Here's the video so you can see for yourself what happened-



It wasn't spotted on the Port Authority's airport camera's at the time, but Continental Airlines camera's did pick it up. Clearly someone in a control room saw it on a camera because within minutes Newark airport was shut down as every cop in the tri-state area was dragged in to find this man. Everyone who was sitting on a plane waiting to pull away from the gate and everyone who was air side was sent back outside security and told to go through it all again. News channels here were suggesting 10,000 people were affected by that move, and television pictures of thousands queuing seemed to suggest that was true.

News came Friday night that after days of searching for the person in the video footage, a man named Haison Jiang, 28, has been arrested and now faces a charge of defiant trespass. It's really a pretty harmless incident, and there's no question of any malicious intent on Jiang's part. But one thing is for certain; it's pretty embarrassing to have someone stroll air-side so easily when the US government is arguing 24/7 that full body scanners are essential. It really makes me think that there's no need for all this equipment if people working in airports were really watching people's behaviour.

Given the reaction to this incident in the US the Slovakian government should thank their luck that the misplaced explosives ended up on a flight to Dublin and not New York....

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