New Airport Security Wouldn’t Have Stopped Abdulmutallab

In an effort to appear to do something, airports introduce intrusive pat-down searches with up to 5-hout delays, although new measures would not have stopped Abdulmutallab

By Robin Rowe

New airport security delays passengers, not terrorists

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Gosh!TV) 12/28/2009 – Airport security has scrambled to introduce new security measures in the wake of the Delta Christmas underpants bomber terrorist incident. Pat-down searches of all passengers on transatlantic flights, restricting passengers from going to the lavatory an hour before landing or even having blankets, are all rubbish according to aviation experts and common sense. However, there is a simple security measure that hasn’t been done yet.

“Patting down passengers is very tiring for staff when there are 300 people on a flight,” said former head of Heathrow BAA security Norman Shanks in an interview with the Guardian. “Limiting carry-on bags is simply an attempt to control the amount of baggage that needs to be searched, but is not a long-term option. I am not sure the 60-minute rule achieves anything.”

The problem with the 60-minute rule is that most terrorists prefer to blow up aircraft not at the airport but at altitude over the Atlantic, where 50 degree below zero outside temperatures and falling tens of thousands of feet tend to ensure that there are no survivors. Furthermore, such wreckage will be spread across the bottom of the ocean making it difficult to retrieve. It was only a flight delay that caused the Lockerbie bomb to explode while an airliner was over Scotland, which aided investigators in piecing together what happened.

Some news reports suggest that the reason Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was able to fly undetected from Lagos in Nigeria to Detroit via Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport is because airport metal detectors do not pick up explosives. However, Delta flies out of  Lagos and only has a stop in Amsterdam. It was in Nigeria that Abdulmutallab evaded detection. In Amsterdam all he had to do was simply not get off the aircraft.

 No amount of security at Amsterdam would help unless all international passengers are required to deplane and go through security again. There are no reports of this relatively small measure being taken. Instead, everyone else flying from Europe is being subjected to pat-down searches. Abdulmutallab would still get through. Major airport hubs that serve America, such as Heathrow and Schiphol, have better security than developing world airports…if that better security is used.

While airport securty is important, the big failure with the Delta bomber incident is not airport security, but homeland security. Abdulmutallab’s father had warned the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria that his son was dangerous, yet his name was not on a watch list or a no-fly list. The U.S. no-fly list has half a million names on it, but not Abdulmutallab. U.S. congressmen have found it difficult to get their names off the U.S. no-fly list after being included in error. Apparently, it’s not easy to add names to the list either, that the whole no-fly list system is in desperate need of overhaul.