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Aviation History
2001
2001 - 3213.PDF
TERROR AFTERMATH AIRPORT SECURITY JUSTIN WASTNAGE / LONDON Interest in biometric checks soars Airlines are rushing to find quick and effective security measures to ensure the identification of air travellers Airport security systems developers were among the few companies to see their stocks rise last week as air lines scramble to implement tighter identification checks. This follows FBI investigations pointing towards several of the hijackers travelling on false passports. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) security com mittee says the US attacks will pro vide added impetus to its calls to install computerised checking of air travellers' identification. The association has seen a surge of interest over the past two weeks in its simplified passenger travel (SFT) working group studying bio metric recognition - systems that use unique physiological character istics to identify people. This also applies to companies involved in biometric research that have been inundated with calls. Airlines seek tighter security at minimum inconvenience to passengers. Andrew Eros, chief executive of fingerprint recognition company Accimetrix, says the company has been in talks with most major air lines over the past two weeks. Eros says that its system provides a low- cost way of ensuring that the per- Fingerprint recognition provides a low-cost identification solution son checking in would be the per son who boards the aircraft. Accimetrix is also discussing finger print locks on cockpit doors. IATA's SFT programme was cre ated in 1999 in an attempt to "streamline repetitive identifica tion checks at airports", with emphasis initially being placed on enhanced customer service. British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, for example, are set to begin a trial at London Heathrow using iris scan ning for frequent flyer electronic ticketing and lounge access. However, the IATA now advocates a one-stop system, with iris and handprint scans linked to immigra tion and law enforcement bodies' databases to prohibit travelling under false identities or when on a wanted list. Such linkage of data bases has been resisted in some countries, principally the UK and USA, on civil liberties grounds. At present, however, travellers on US domestic flights can present identification at the check-in counter then pass the boarding card to another person. Even at European airports, where anti- terrorist measures have been in place for years, pre-airside identifi cation checking is a repetitive task carried out by humans, whose average accuracy rate is 40%. Ultimately, IATA believes trav ellers will have to accept some loss of personal liberty in exchange for safer skies. The US immigration ser vice already operates a voluntary scheme, called Inspass, which matches a magnetic card to a hand print at the seven busiest entry points, and Australia is to include biometric data on new intelligent passports to be issued next year. PlaneStation, an embryonic net work of regional European airports, is the most advanced in its devel opment of an end-to-end biometric check-in and baggage service, start ing with flights between London Manston airport, Kent, and Odense near Copenhagen, Denmark. IATA envisages a system in which smart card passports are pre sented at a check-in machine simi lar to existing e-ticket stations. The passenger would then be required to either look at the scanner, place his hand on the scanner or, in "very scrupulous airports", both. AIRCRAFT SECURITY DAVID LEARMOUNT / LONDON Hijack 'solutions' rebutted by manufacturers Technology which could take over control from ter rorist pilots might create greater risks than it eliminates. Suggestions about how technology could take control from pilots in the event that flight- qualified terrorists get into a flight deck again have become popular among commentators, but aircraft and avionics manufacturers are not joining in. Jim Coyne, president of the US National Air Transportation Association, was one of many who proposed that future aircraft should be able to be flown from the ground with the control input of peo ple in the cockpit negated. Manufacturers - not happy to be quoted - have countered that being able to take control of aircraft from the ground would be the stuff that terrorists' dreams are made of. Anyone, they say, capable of replicating the datalinks necessary to carry this out could create disaster without the need to become a martyr. The other serious objection raised is that if the technology developed a fault it could cause acci dents by intervening at a critical time when there was no hijack and the flight was proceeding safely. An outwardly more plausible system - not pro posed by the manufacturers - is linking a developed version of the Honeywell enhanced ground proxim ity warning system (EGPWS) into the flight envelope protection system (FEPS) in fly-by-wire airliners. This would make it impossible to fly aircraft into buildings because the aircraft would automati cally turn away or climb to avoid them. This assumes that the fly-by-wire FEPS system was the Airbus type, as in the Boeing 777 the pilots can directly override the flight envelope protection sys tem. Even in an Airbus, if the pilots selected direct control law instead of normal, or if they cut the fuel to the engines, which would result in the same thing (as well as forcing the pilots to glide), they could cut out the FEPS. Honeywell says only that the fundamental tenet of all certification authorities is that no one system or component fault should be able to bring down an aircraft, so any system able to take total control of an aircraft would require a level of integrity entailing multiplexing in all its components and data inputs, probably with a voting system. Airbus says its control philosophy is that all important manoeuvres or system selections must be the result of pilot action. Changing that, it says, would require a completely different approach by the certification authorities. The manufacturer adds that it has a team working on possible solutions to the terrorism threat, but that the best protection is to prevent hijackers getting on to the aircraft. EADS, the majority shareholder in Airbus, says it is looking at the possibilities of harnessing its areas of expertise to see if it can find systems to defeat hijack attempts. These include encryption, unmanned air vehicles, flight management systems, information management, and communications, command and control systems. www.flightinternational.com FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 25 SEPTEM BER - 1 OCTOBER 2001 9
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