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It was on December 17, 1903 that the Wright brothers flew the first powered and controlled aircraft that flagged off the emergence of civil aviation. And about 28 years later, in 1931, the first incident of hijacking in Peru delivered the grim message that this sector held out a grave threat.
That, over the years, the aviation industry has become a soft target for hijackers is borne out by the fact that between 1948 and 1957 there were 15 incidents of hijacking, with the number climbing to 48 from 1958 to 1967. The next two years were the worst in aviation history on this count with 1968 witnessing 38 hijackings and 1969 recording 82 such incidents, the highest ever in the history of global civil aviation.
It was after the September 11, 2001 incident when terrorists for the first time used the aircraft themselves as missiles to destroy targets such as the World Trade Centre in the US that the world woke up to a new kind of threat from the skies.
Today, even while the civil aviation sector is growing at a fast pace, security concerns are equally engaging the attention of the governments globally, with new methods of disrupting civil aviation operations coming to the fore. The recent bombing of Moscow's Domodedovo airport terminal signals yet another menacing shift in the modus operandi of terrorist groups, with airports becoming a soft target.
Closer home, the Kandahar hijack of IC-814, although a cross-border security issue, brought into sharp focus the fact that the aviation sector is interlinked globally and that a breach of security at any airport has international ramifications. “In view of the current surcharged security environment in the country and threat to civil aviation from terrorist outfits, it is imperative to balance growth and security,” Mr V.P. Agrawal, Chairman of Airports Authority of India (AAI), said at an aviation security summit in Hyderabad last week.
Global challenges
India, the ninth biggest aviation market in the world, also faces global challenges in grappling with the inadequacies in aviation security, especially with the domestic civil aviation industry witnessing a brisk pace of growth in the last few years. “India is still one of the least penetrated markets (in the civil aviation sector), even lower than Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Nigeria. India has 0.04 trips per capita, compared to 2.12 in the US. Air traffic is set to grow at 1.5 to 2 times growth, that is 15 per cent per annum till 2015,” Mr Agrawal pointed out. Doubtless, India has averted any hijack incident since 1993 and any major sabotage incident since 1980s, but the security concern is there. The CISF has been deployed for airport security functions at 52 AAI airports, while for the remaining 24 operational airports the State police is involved.
Security gadgets such as hand-held metal detectors and X-ray baggage detection inspection systems have been put in place by the Central Industrial Security Force. “The AAI has carried out surveys for installation of Perimeter Intrusion Detection System at eight airports, and further processes will be commenced soon,” Mr Agrawal said. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation, on its part, has issued various regulations to cope with the increased aviation activity in the country.
“For the first time, the domestic market in India crossed the 50 million passenger mark in 2010, registering a growth of nearly 19 per cent. This market is expected to grow at around 10 per cent annually to reach a level of 150 to 180 million passengers by 2020. Departures per week have almost doubled about 6,500 per week in 2006 to more than 12,000 per week today.
Similar expansion has been seen in airport infrastructure, where the number of operational airports has increased from 50 in 2000 to 82 in 2010,” says Mr E. K. Bharat Bhushan, Director-General of Civil Aviation.
Airport operators such as the GMR Group, which runs the Hyderabad international airport, have started their own security agencies. The GMR Group has its group company, Raxa Security Services, which provides security technological solutions.
“We have a training academy spread over 100 acres to provide training facilities for high-end technical services,” Mr G.U.G. Sastry, Executive Director of Rajiv Gandhi International Airport at Hyderabad said.
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