Airports tend to make some people stressed. Some feel annoyed with the security checks, others are simply afraid to fly.
Therefore incidents in airports are not a rare thing. And there are of course "contributing" factors.
Earlier this week, we learned about some of the factors that contribute to the tense atmosphere some feel when they enter an airport terminal.
The majority of emergency incidents occurring in airports are related to drunken and aggressive passengers, according to the preliminary conclusions of the first in-depth study of European airports, conducted by the EU-funded Behaviour Modelling for Security in Airports (Bemosa) consortium.
The report, which is based on 360 interviews held at eight European airports, found that major security actions taken by airport security employees relate to the confiscation of illegal items and dealing with unruly passengers.
Based on the interviews, Bemosa researchers compiled a list of episodes representing different situations in which security agents were required to make a decision and act.
The report indicates that 131 of the 369 reported critical incidents that represented a direct threat to safety stemmed from passengers carrying prohibited articles, including knives, guns and ammunition.
Ninety incidents involved unruly and disruptive people, mainly drunken passengers. These incidents caused major disruption to security procedures as security personnel reported they often needed help from co-workers or the police when facing drunken people.
"The results illustrate the complexity of actual behaviour in airports. There is a definite need to improve security decision-making abilities as there is a gap between procedures and actual behaviour when a threat is recognised," said Prof Alan Kirschenbaum, from the Technion in Israel, who coordinated the research.
"Security decisions tend to be inconsistent as employees regard most threats as false alarms, have never faced a real threat and have pre-biased estimates of what constitutes a threat," he said.
The report indicates that airport employees do not rely primarily on procedures or rules and more than one-third admitted they exceeded or bent the rules when the situation called for it.
The interviews also revealed that employees' concerns are not perceived to be terror related, but are primarily passenger related.
Leave a comment