Examining the current counterterrorism security agenda in civil aviation is one of the critical areas of thematic scholarship aimed at achieving desired outcomes. This research project focused on analyzing data collected through qualitative and quantitative strategies to assess the extent to which the employees involved in onboard security actually feel threatened, whether they have experienced it in their experience, and what strategies and tactics they employ to ensure the safety of the entire airplane. This project lasted for several weeks, during each of which the necessary material was collected, analysis was conducted, sources were reviewed, and sections of the paper previously written were adjusted. The motivation for this study was the growing popularity of civil aviation. It is worth specifying that the world’s population is constantly growing, as is the number of people who can afford to travel between cities, countries, and continents by air (FAA, 2022). Civil aviation as a whole is no longer a niche for an elite segment of society, and the emergence of low-cost carriers, regular promotional offers for customers, and loyalty and discount systems reflect the growing popularity of this industry among the average member of society.
At the same time, the trend of civil aviation’s growing popularity is exacerbated by its accessibility to criminals as well. Criminals, potentially dangerous and socially unhealthy passengers, and terrorists can use airplanes as a means to commit criminal acts. The choice of such a tool does not seem surprising: the feature of an airplane is that it spends most of its time in the air, so it is limited in the use of law enforcement forces (Jenkins, 2020). Moreover, in the event of an explosion on board, the plane would immediately go down, creating a tragedy of overall proportions and almost guaranteed to take the lives of hundreds of people. A third reason why airplanes are of interest to criminals can be considered the sensitivity of society. History knows many tragic examples of planes being hijacked, crashed, or blown up, resulting in the deaths of vast numbers of passengers and crew. Because of this, society has a preconceived notion of poor airplane safety and vulnerability during flight, which can be exploited by the perpetrator. The fourth factor for the choice of civil aviation is the geography of the route – when an aircraft travels between several countries and passes through the airspace of several states, an attack can be classified as a threat to national security or as a private example of a two-state war. An illustrative example of this assessment was the recent findings of the Dutch Security Council, which found that the Boeing 777 from Malaysia Airlines, which was flying Amsterdam-Kuala Lumpur, was shot down over Ukrainian territory by Russian military forces in 2014 (de Hoon, 2022). Given the degree of tension in the military conflict between today’s Russia and Ukraine, such news could prove particularly advantageous for the parties involved. Finally, a corollary of this high sensitivity is that such tragedies are widely reported by various international media, which creates an even greater wave of panic and benefits terrorist communities with the goal of intimidating the population and demonstrating their power. Thus, criminals and terrorists will continue to turn to airplanes as the most convenient and widespread tools of violence, which means there is a need for better counterterrorism security measures.
It was a profound understanding of the balance between antiterrorist security and the desire of terrorists to use airplanes as a means to perform a terrorist attack that motivated the writing of this research project. With the ever-growing population and popularity of civil aviation, the frequency of terrorist attacks can be expected to increase, which is naturally a severe threat to national and public security. That said, decision-makers continue to develop technologies and tools to effectively counter the threat. Nevertheless, most such security measures are concentrated at the airport as the entry gateway for passengers to board aircraft. It is at the airport that people go through baggage and carry-on baggage screening, multiple body scanners, passport control, and customs control. Modern technology allows the complete scanning of passengers’ bodies and luggage in order to detect drugs, explosives, and weapons (Rajapaksha and Jayasuriya, 2020). At the same time, the list of substances and items prohibited for carriage is constantly expanding. Thus, the concentration of protective measures at the airport is high, and it is this part of the overall journey that is the most aggressive for terrorists. As the literature review has shown, much less attention has been paid to antiterrorist security strategies and measures on board.
This research project addressed the outlined knowledge gap by using semi-structured interviewing and online surveying as qualitative and quantitative research methods, respectively. The choice of a mixed-methods design for the work was motivated by the desire to cover the weaknesses of each paradigm and to achieve synergies, which is not possible when selecting individual tactics alone (Leavy, 2022). For both data collection methods, respondents directly related to the civilian air travel industry were invited: they were flight attendants, pilots, and in-flight engineers. The interviews focused primarily on identifying respondents’ experiences as well as discussing the strategies they use to improve safety on board. The online survey, in turn, focused on the problems of prioritizing security, clarifying levels of responsibility, and selecting the aspect that is most needed to create an efficient, automated, and optimized antiterrorist security system.
Among the key findings of the interviews were systematicity, the use of checklists, a strict delegation of responsibility, and accountability enjoyed by the crew during flights. Notably, one of the critical issues, which consisted of determining the level of passenger and bystander entry into the cockpit, was resolved through interviews. Participants from different airlines and countries stated unequivocally that only those people who had been entered in the cockpit in advance, that is, before the flight took off, had access to the cockpit. The armored insulating material of such doors prevents unauthorized entry by unauthorized people, although, of course, the history of civil aviation knows of such cases as well. Another intriguing question of the project was whether flight attendants use profiling techniques to track changes in passenger behavior (TSA, 2021; Denault et al., 2020; Alhoff, 2018). The data showed that profiling as a term is not used, and some of the participants were not even aware of it, but the tactic of observing passengers and identifying potentially dangerous ones based on their behavior, surroundings, and emotional state is used universally. The results of the online survey showed that a systematic approach is a key to developing anti-terrorism security systems, which means that all implemented changes must be fact-based, firmly grounded, designed and projected to the smallest detail, and hierarchical in their structure. When asked whose safety is more important, the crew or the passengers, the survey respondents showed no statistically significant difference, which implied that the safety of all people on board is perceived equally because, in the event of a terrorist attack, everyone’s life is at risk. This also implied that crew members, who were the responsible persons on board and had obviously more authority, did not place the importance of their safety significantly higher or lower than that of passengers, indicating the presence of mechanisms of care, compassion, and leadership responsibility. The overall conclusion from the two data collection methods was that aviation safety systems on board were highly rigorous and systematic, although some variation was observed between different airlines. Training, accountability, a delegation of responsibility, and the inability to make critical decisions independently are significant attributes of modern civil aviation.
The research project conducted demonstrated the state of the current agenda of antiterrorist security systems in civil aviation. It revealed a severe knowledge deficit in scientific sources and was able to at least partially cover it with the primary data collected. For the few pieces of scientific evidence that did get published, the research paper showed an excellent fit to the findings, which allows it to be seen as reliable and relevant for further discussion. The work is a complete, multi-week research project that has gone from design and detail to analysis and interpretation of the data collected. Nevertheless, there are further avenues of research development. This involves examining geographic differentiation in counterterrorism security issues, focusing on the needs of the public as significant consumers of carrier services, and discussing the maximum number of terrorist attacks that have already occurred in order to find those vulnerabilities that have been taken into account by terrorists to further place those discoveries into modern civil aviation mechanisms. Thus, further development of the project seems a reasonable and prudent practice to substantially expand the research framework already in place.
Reference List
Alhoff, F. (2018) ‘Liberty and security: a balanced approach’, University of Pennsylvania Journal of Law and Public Affairs, 3(1), pp. 53-82.
de Hoon, M. (2022) Dutch court, in life sentences: Russia had “overall control” of forces in Eastern Ukraine downing of flight MH17. Web.
Denault, V., et al., (2020) ‘L’analyse de la communication non verbale: les dangers de la pseudoscience en contextes de sécurité et de justice’, Revue Internationale De Criminologie Et De Police Technique Et Scientifique, 73(1), pp. 15-44.
FAA (2022) The economic impact of U.S. civil aviation: 2020. Web.
Jenkins, B. M. (2020). ‘The terrorist threat to transportation targets and preventive measures’, in Schmid, A. P. (ed.) Handbook of terrorism prevention and preparedness. Amsterdam: The Hague, pp. 790-815.
Leavy, P. (2022) Research design: quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods, arts-based, and community-based participatory research approaches. New York: Guilford Publications.
Rajapaksha, A. and Jayasuriya, N. (2020) ‘Smart airport: a review on future of the airport operation’, Global Journal of Management and Business Research, 20(3), pp. 24-33.
TSA (2021) Security guidelines for general aviation airport operators and users. Web.