Still no let-up in flight bomb risk

Alriyadh newspaper said they were hidden in his anal cavity. Scott Stewart of intelligence company Stratfor said such a technique would likely have “a catastrophic result if employed on an aircraft, especially if it were removed from the bomber's body and placed in a strategic location on board the aircraft.”

Other novelties since 2006 include so-called swarm attacks by suicide gunmen who have struck hotels and other targets in Asia using automatic rifles and hand grenades in the past 12 months including the Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people.

“Terrorists will innovate to get around airport security,” says David Claridge, of Janusian security consultants, who points to a lack of common standards among aviation authorities around the world as a continuing vulnerability.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA), which represents 230 airlines, says aviation security has improved since the 9/11 attacks on U.S. targets, but its Web site notes lack of global standards “has created an uncoordinated mess.”

Cost Pressure

Security continues to impose large costs on the aviation sector, which depends on a relatively unimpeded flow of passengers and cargo to work commercially. IATA says airlines and passengers pay US$5.9 billion in a year in security costs.

Yates said that until governments did more to fund security improvements, commercial airport operators would not invest sufficiently in new technology, he said. Getting new security hardware past barriers of red tape and into airports was sometimes an uphill struggle for manufacturers.

Philip Baum, editor of Aviation Security International, says tougher pre-flight security has produced big queues that could present tempting targets for attacks inside terminals.

Like Laviv, Baum is an advocate of profiling, referring to the practice of analyzing the behavior of passengers before flights to watch for signs of malicious intent, and criticizes the aviation security community for being overly reactive.

David Learmount, safety and operations editor of British-based aerospace magazine Flight International, said there were limits to what the industry could do.

“We could have perfect, proactive security,” he said. “Heathrow for example could be like a military base in wartime.

“But if you bring in procedures without evidence showing it is necessary, it is something society won't take, and we would completely destroy our own freedom. We don't want to live like that, and we would choke global travel almost to death.”

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