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How to Shoot Down an Airliner
5.2k Plays2 years ago
In this episode we sit down to discuss the risk posed to commercial airliners by terrorism and armed conflicts with Aviation Security expert William Sandover. After 29 years in the UK Foreign Office, with postings in Vienna, Buenos Aires, Paris and Pakistan, William joined British Airways in 2008 as their International Risk Adviser, responsible for analysing the security threats to the airline's operation and people and working with colleagues to manage these. In 2015, William was appointed the first Chair of the Global Business Travel Association (Europe)'s Risk Committee. In 2017 William was appointed as Cathay Pacific's Independent Security Adviser.
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Hosts
00:00:06
Speaker
Welcome to How to Get on a Watchlist, the new podcast series from Encyclopedia Geopolitica. In each episode, we sit down with leading experts to talk about dangerous acts, organisations and people. We examine historical cases, as well as the risks these subjects currently pose. From assassinations and airline shootdowns, through to kidnappings and coups, we'll examine each of these threats through the lenses of both the dangerous actors behind them and the agencies around the world seeking to stop them.
00:00:38
Speaker
In the interest of operational security, certain tactical details will be omitted from these discussions. However, the cases and threats which we discuss here are very real.
00:01:05
Speaker
I'm Louis H. Passant, the founder and editor of Encyclopedia Geopolitica. I'm also a doctoral researcher at the University of Loughborough in the field of intelligence and espionage in the private sector. In my day job, I provide intelligence to corporate executives on complex geopolitical and security issues. My name is Colin Reed. I am a former US intelligence professional now working in the private sector to bring geopolitical insights and risk analysis to business leaders.
Expert Guest Introduction: William Sandover
00:01:30
Speaker
Today, we're joined by William Sandover to discuss how to shoot down an airliner.
00:01:35
Speaker
After 29 years in the UK Foreign Office with postings in Vienna, Buenos Aires, Paris and Pakistan, William joined British Airways in 2008 as their International Risk Advisor, responsible for analysing the security threats to the airline's operations and people, and working with colleagues to manage these. In 2015, William was appointed the first Chair of the Global Business Travel Association's Europe Risk Committee, and in 2017, William was appointed at Cathay Pacific as Independent Security Advisor.
00:02:00
Speaker
So I think we've got a guest here with us today who probably knows more than anyone else about aviation security. So William, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you very much and delighted to be invited to join this podcast. I'm sure there are many others, and I know a number of pilots from British Airways who probably know more about the nitty gritty of aviation security, but I guess my role was much more geopolitical than the technical side.
History of Airline Shootdowns
00:02:26
Speaker
What I'd like to do is to go over the six
00:02:31
Speaker
that have been shot down or attacked since over the last 40 odd years, I guess one could go back further, but I think probably 40 years ago, technology began to intervene in a way that it wasn't there before. And then we can go on to sort of the lessons that you can pull out from those case histories and to what extent and the ways in which airlines now are trying to avoid the kind of trouble that they got into in the past.
00:03:00
Speaker
So we go back and I think the first case that is relevant is back in September 1983, so 40 odd years ago, when Korean airline flight 007, and the number may be unfortunate, was flying from New York to Seoul via Anchorage and was shot down over the Soviet Union by a Russian Sukhoi fighter jet. It was on route from Anchorage to Seoul, but
00:03:28
Speaker
the pilots had made a navigational mistake and got off route and found themselves flying over prohibited airspace. This was unfortunately for them around the time that the Americans had been conducting a high altitude aerial reconnaissance mission and the Soviet Air Force treated this unidentified aircraft and I think unidentified we'll see later that sets have now been taken to try and identify aircraft better but
00:03:58
Speaker
They treated it as an intruding American spy plane and shot it down with air-to-air missiles after they claim having fired warning shots, which were probably not seen by the pilots. And just as an aside at this point, the view from a cockpit is pretty limited. Pilots can only see forward and not really completely side to side. Sadly, all the passengers, 269, and the crew were killed.
00:04:28
Speaker
Now, the Russians initially denied any knowledge of the incident, but later did admit to shooting down the aircraft, claiming that it was on an intelligence mission, adding that it was deliberate provocation by the Americans to probe military preparedness or even to provoke a war. It's worth putting that into some context. September 1983 was the height of one of the Cold War's crises,
00:04:55
Speaker
The Americans were bringing Pershing and cruise missiles into Europe. The Russians were posting SS-20. Both missiles were not intercontinental but intermediate range. And there was a real scare of the possibility of nuclear war in Europe. And if your listeners haven't seen this series, the German series Deutschland 83 gives a wonderful feel.
00:05:21
Speaker
for that time and the music is great as well but both sides were trying to read the other and there was a lot of jumpiness at the time. Now as a result of that incident the Americans altered their tracking procedures for aircraft departing from Alaska and was one of the events that prompted the Reagan administration to allow worldwide access to GPS so that pilots could have a better feel for where they were flying.
00:05:49
Speaker
That was the first one we'll jump forward five years. July 1988, Iran Air Flight 655 flying from Tehran to Dubai. It was shot down by a surface-to-air missile fired from the American Navy ship USS Van Sen. And again, the aircraft was destroyed. Again, 290 people odd were killed. And it was
00:06:13
Speaker
hit was flying over Iran's territorial waters. So a place you would think ought to be safe. Again, the geopolitical context is important. It was eight years into the Iran-Iraq War. The Iranians were pretty hostile to any ships or aircraft in the Gulf. And the Van Sen had one of its helicopters draw warning fire from Iranian speedboats. But nevertheless, they shot down the civilian aircraft. Now, according to the Americans,
00:06:43
Speaker
The crew had incorrectly identified the Airbus as an attacking F-14 Tomcat. That may seem surprising, given the sophistication of radar, but that's what the alleged happened. The Iranians had had Tomcats since the 1970s, and the crew had been told that these had been equipped with air-to-ground weapons. And they say that the Van Saen had made 10 attempts to contact the aircraft
00:07:13
Speaker
on both military and civilian frequencies, but got no response. The Iranians say that the aircraft was transmitting what are known as IFF squawks. These are signals an aircraft will transmit so that it can be identified. And it was in Mode 3, a signal that clearly identified it as a civilian aircraft.
00:07:36
Speaker
This whole event was heavily criticized and a number of people have blamed the captain of the Vancennes, William C. Rogers, for being overly aggressive. It does seem to me that they were overly jumpy and perhaps could have been more cautious in responding to what they saw with the threat. Anyway, the Americans continue to insist that the Vancennes was operating in self-defense.
00:08:02
Speaker
We'll move forward another three years to an incident that is little known. This is Siberia Airlines Flight 1812. It was shot down by accident, we think, by the Ukrainian Air Force over the Black Sea on the 4th of October, 2001. It was en route from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk, and again, all passengers and crew were killed. Most of the passengers were Israelis visiting relatives in Russia.
00:08:31
Speaker
The accident occurred during a joint Ukrainian-Russian military air defense exercise. At that time, Ukraine and Russia were allies. Seems kind of strange talking about that today. And they were exercises were being held in a Russian Black Sea Fleet research center.
00:08:51
Speaker
The Ukrainians eventually admitted that it might have been then the course of crash, probably by an errant S-200 missile. They did pay $15 million to surviving family members of the 78 victims. I'm not sure that we ever will quite know what happened there, but again, there was a military exercise going on and a missile fired in error.
00:09:15
Speaker
A year later, in November 2002, there were twin attacks in Kenya on Israeli holidaymakers in Mombasa. Early in the morning, a vehicle crashed through a barrier outside an Israeli-owned hotel and killed 13 people staying in the hotel in Mombasa. At the same time, attackers fired two shoulder launched
00:09:39
Speaker
SA-7, fairly unsophisticated surface-to-air missiles, at a chartered Boeing 757 airline, owned by Arkia Airlines, as it took off from Mombasa International. The charter company had a regular weekly service, so this was a fairly predictable movement, and we know exactly what it was because the missile launchers were found in an area near Mombasa.
00:10:05
Speaker
The pilots saw two missiles streak past them but decided to carry on the flight to Israel and where it landed about five hours later. The attacks are thought to have been orchestrated by Al-Qaeda operatives in Somalia in an attempt to disrupt the Israeli tourist industry on the African continent and indeed they did because following that attack all flights from Israel to Kenya were cancelled indefinitely. November 2003
00:10:34
Speaker
Shortly after takeoff from Baghdad, an Airbus cargo plane was struck on the left wing by an SA-14 man pad, slightly more sophisticated than the SA-7, shortly after takeoff on its scheduled flight to Bahrain. It was hit at about 2,400 meters, 8,000 foot, and severe wing damage resulted in a far complete loss of hydraulics, but somehow the three-man crew got it back to Baghdad using
00:11:04
Speaker
differential engine thrust so flying it and steering it by the engines because they'd lost all controls and despite the major damage to the wing. To reduce its exposure to ground attack the aircraft had executed a very rapid climb out but that wasn't sufficient. The 38 year old Belgian captain joked that it was just as well it was a cargo plane and
00:11:30
Speaker
because had it been a passenger aircraft, he could have gone back, looked out of a window, a porthole, and seen the extent of the damage. And he said if he'd known how badly damaged it was, he would never have been able to land the plane. But he was operating blind. And they were lucky because the outboard left-wing fuel tank was full, and there was no fuel air vapor in there to explode. So on the way down, it just leaped fuel.
00:11:58
Speaker
It was very close and I think I don't know what happened to the Belgian captain, but I hope you're still flying somewhere and remembering the incident. I jump forward now and I'm going to miss out the big brother for the time being to September 2018 when Syrian air defense shot down a Russian military
00:12:20
Speaker
Ellucian 20 maritime surveillance aircraft off the coast of Syria. The shooting down followed an attack on targets in Syria by the Israeli Air Force and although the Russians admitted that it was the Syrians who had done so, they blamed the Israeli Air Force for not following agreed deconfliction protocols and for hiding behind other aircraft. The Israelis counterclaim that their aircraft were all back in Israel by the time the incident happened.
00:12:50
Speaker
Now there have been a lot of incidents around the eastern Mediterranean of Syrian surface-to-air missiles going astray and generally landing in the sea, although in one case a missile landed in Cyprus and set fire to a forest. Civilian aircraft in the area have on several occasions been warned by Israeli air traffic control to change course or delay their arrival. So that's sort of quite a hot area of
00:13:20
Speaker
potential risk. Then in January 2020, on the 8th of January, Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 from Tehran to Kiev was shot down shortly after takeoff from Tehran airport by two surface-to-air missiles fired by an Iranian air defense unit.
00:13:41
Speaker
Now, this shoot down occurred five days after the Americans had assassinated Iranian Revolutionary Guard Commander Major General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad, and hours after the Iranians had retaliated by launching ballistic missiles against US bases in Iraq.
00:14:00
Speaker
So the air defenses in the area were on high alert for some kind of attack, and the Iranians initially denied responsibility, finally admitted that the military had shot down the aircraft, having mistaken it for a cruise missile incoming. In response to that attack, the US Federal Aviation Administration issued a notice to Airmen, a NOTAM banning all American civil aircraft
00:14:26
Speaker
from flying over Iran, Iraq, the Gulf of Oman, and the Persian Gulf. Now, a lot of other people will follow that no-town, but given the ban on overflying Russia at the moment, I suspect that most people are now having to ignore that. But at the time, several airlines, including Austrian, Singapore, KLM, France, Air India, and others, all began to reroute their flights. And all these reroutings add time and cost money.
00:14:54
Speaker
The last case, and obviously it's the one that everyone knows about, is in July 2014 when Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, MH17, flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down flying over eastern Ukraine.
00:15:12
Speaker
Now that occurred during the war in Donbass, over territory controlled by Russian separatist forces, and it was shot down using a Russian-book SA-11 surface-to-air missile. According to the excellent Dutch Air accident investigation
00:15:29
Speaker
which is well worth the read for its forensic analysis. The book that was used originated from the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade of the Russian Federation and had been transported from Russia on the day of the crash fired from a field in a rebel controlled area and returned to Russia shortly afterwards.
00:15:51
Speaker
They know the direction for which the missile came because of the forensic analysis of the shrapnel that went into the cockpit. So they know it was fired from forward of the plane and was going upwards and backwards in connection with the plane's movement of travel. The book was most likely operated by Russian military personnel, according to reports of the accidents of the operating crew. And it is pretty certain that it left that night
00:16:21
Speaker
because that evening two book launcher vehicles, one of which carried only three missiles out of a complement four, was seen leaving the area. Now, the area was known to be at a high risk for military aircraft. Several aircraft from the Ukrainian Air Force had been shot down in the months and days preceding the MH17 incident. And on the 14th of June,
00:16:48
Speaker
About five weeks before, a Ukrainian Air Force Ilyushin-76 military transport was shot down with loss of nine crew members. And on the 14th of July, so just a few days before, an Antonov-28 aircraft flying at 6,500 meters, 21,000 foot, was shot down. And the militia reportedly claimed that a book missile launcher, which they had previously seized and made operational,
00:17:17
Speaker
had been used to bring down the aircraft. It's here that perhaps the otherwise excellent Dutch report, in my view, somewhat ducksy issue, because the use of long range weapons to attack Ukrainian military aircraft was known about at the time.
Analysis of Shootdown Causes and Tactics
00:17:34
Speaker
But the view of Kiev based Western experts was that civilian aircraft operating at cruising height and MH17 was above 33,000 foot were not targets.
00:17:48
Speaker
And I'm quite sure that the MH17 was not the intended target. Now, one problem here is that my understanding of the book system is that it is designed to be operated as a battalion consisting of a command vehicle, target acquisition radar, and a number of launch vehicles. And in this case, the missile launch vehicle, which is equipped with its own radar, was operating without the command vehicle.
00:18:16
Speaker
The launch vehicle's radar is designed to guide the missile towards the target, but not to identify what the target actually is. So my guess is that they saw this plane up there, sawed it with the Ukrainian military aircraft, used their radar to guide the missile onto the target without ever knowing what they were aiming at. Three other commercial aircraft were in the same area when the Malaysian airline was shot down.
00:18:44
Speaker
And some of them, I mean, they could easily have been the targets or hit by mistake. But at least three airlines, Cathay, Qantas and British Airways had already taken the decision not to overfly the area because of that very risk of a mistaken shoot down. I mean, the incidents that I've gone through there, and forgive me if it was a bit of a gallop, are with two exceptions, all cases of mistaken identity.
00:19:14
Speaker
Arguably, more care should have been taken to ensure that the states did not occur, but even in the case of Cal 007, where there would have been de visu on a civilian aircraft, it was thought to have been on a spy mission. Now, the exceptions, of course, were the Baghdad freighter incident, but Baghdad was known to be effectively a hostile zone, and the Mombasa incident
00:19:37
Speaker
which was quite clearly terrorism and not shoot down by a military power. Both these cases clearly, the aircraft was deliberately targeted. William, thank you very much for sharing these incredible examples. The history you've talked about there, I think more than anything shows how important it is to get aviation security right. I was really stunned by your descriptions of total loss of life in almost all of these cases.
00:20:04
Speaker
but it's not a very well-known field, aviation security. So the first question I suppose I have is how did you get into this field of work? How does someone find themselves working in the aviation security space?
00:20:16
Speaker
I think there are multiple routes now. Mine is unusual because in many ways I think BA was the leader in this field, recruiting a relatively senior former Foreign Service officer to analyze international risk. And we have been able to draw on our 30-odd years of
00:20:35
Speaker
practical and occasionally personal experience and with our grayer hairs able to discuss issues authoritatively with the chief executive and directors. I was the third in the role at British Airways and that role was established after Gulf War I
00:20:54
Speaker
in the early 90s when British Airways had a plane taken hostage in Kuwait. And the feeling was that such an incident was potentially predictable. It doesn't mean that it would have been predicted, but it was potentially predictable. Since then, there has been a veritable explosion in the international risk business. Most major companies will have now a department looking at threats to their operation and advising the security department on threats.
00:21:24
Speaker
And I know that there are now a lot of studies at universities in this area, which certainly didn't exist 30 years ago. So whilst this function now exists across a wide range of businesses, it may well be drawing from a slightly different pool than mine, although a number of my former colleagues are occupying positions in security. William, I was listening to your case studies and it really struck me how many of these incidents have happened due to a case of mistaken identity or miscalculation.
00:21:53
Speaker
Can you talk some more about that, talk about maybe some common themes that come out in those case studies? How does this keep happening? How does it keep happening? What are the common features?
00:22:05
Speaker
a jumpy organization military that is fearful that something is about to happen, something nasty is about to happen, and they possibly shoot before they think. That is certainly the case in Iran where they were expecting a cruise missile to come in and mistaken identity. Certainly the case, I think, in MH17 where the Ukrainians had air power flying over eastern Ukraine and the separatists.
00:22:33
Speaker
didn't, but they had weapons to defend themselves. Even, I mean, the USS Van Sen, I mean, that was a jumpy American naval ship, not prepared to take a risk with its own safety. So I think that is the first common feature, which means that there is a combat going on on the ground. So that's the other common feature in pretty well all of these.
00:22:55
Speaker
And then mistaken identity, well, the measures now in place, the ability of aircraft to signal who they are, the ability of radar to recognize what an aircraft is, should reduce this significantly. Now, I don't know if the Iranians are telling the truth that they were signaling quite clearly that their aircraft was a civilian aircraft. I suspect the Korean aircraft didn't even have that facility back in the early 80s.
00:23:23
Speaker
The answer is trying to stay out of combat areas, which is getting difficult. Yeah, that makes good sense. So moving from the accidental now to the more malicious, why would a hostile actor want to shoot down an airliner vis-a-vis hijacking it, which seems to sort of be more popular in the 80s, 90s? Now we're talking more about shooting down airliners. What would be the motive to do that rather than to sort of hijack an airliner? I think many reasons. I mean, one,
00:23:51
Speaker
The attackers will escape if they're shooting it down from the ground. I don't think we ever found the Al-Qaeda people who fired at the Israeli aircraft surface-to-air missiles of relatively low tech. There is no need to go through airport security. It is very difficult for hijackers to get on board planes these days. It's a real pain for anyone to get on a plane these days, but the measures in place have made it extremely difficult. And I guess also,
00:24:20
Speaker
A visible filmed Big Bang is great propaganda. The images of 9-11 continue to resonate around the world. I mean on which is quite interesting because the 2006 liquids plot which was a plan to bring down five or six airliners mid-Atlantic is interesting because these multiple aircraft would have gone down and no one would have known how it happened.
00:24:45
Speaker
governments and airlines wouldn't know how to defend themselves against a similar attack, and passengers right across the world would have been absolutely terrified of flying. And it is said that the airlines took about seven years to get over the shock of 9-11, the financial shock of 9-11. If the liquids plot had happened, it would have put airlines everywhere out of business. So I think that's why you might want to shoot down an airline. It's potentially, if you can get a man pad near an airfield, easier to do.
00:25:15
Speaker
But those are quite big hits.
00:25:18
Speaker
Staying briefly on that topic then, you talked about MH17 and the use of the book system, a large, essentially, tank with an anti-aircraft system on top. But there's also, as you've alluded to with some of these case studies, smaller manned portable systems, as we call them, manned pads. And a lot of these are now quite freely available in a number of conflict zones, such as Ukraine and elsewhere. Is there a risk of these systems spilling out of these conflict zones? And how much of a risk do they pose?
00:25:48
Speaker
Yes, indeed. I mean, man pets really do represent a threat to civilian aircraft. And there was a lot of concern about all the weapons left behind in Afghanistan after 9-11, because the Americans have been supplying stinger missiles for years to people and we didn't know, no one really knew where they were. And Libya after the revolution, and in both cases, there were major programs to try and locate those weapons and buy them back.
00:26:15
Speaker
But they're not really a threat to aircraft at cruising altitude. Essentially, they'll fire up to 15,000 foot. But that means that a terrorist would have to haul one up to about 20,000 foot, and then spot an aircraft you wanted to fire at, and they'll end it off. So fairly implausible. And that would be a deliberate shooting down of almost unidentified aircraft. Why would you do that? You can see why you would want to shoot down an Israeli aircraft.
00:26:43
Speaker
And you can see why people wanted to shoot down any aircraft going in and out of Baghdad after the invasion. So there is a risk, and the risk is clearly at takeoff and to a lesser extent landing, takeoff because there's more of a heat signature from an aircraft taking off or it's landing. They may all this be gliding in.
Modern Threats to Aviation Security
00:27:03
Speaker
And where there is a known potential threat, for example,
00:27:08
Speaker
Livia after the revolution or around Sharm El-Shek where I mean the terrorists in Sinai are known to have man pads. Airlines will and governments will discuss with the authorities what preventative measures can be taken. I mean you can patrol obvious launch sites, you can work out the kind of places where you would need to fire a weapon from and you can do aggressive patrolling of those. And of course passengers may note a very fast takeoff
00:27:35
Speaker
and steep climb. I went to Libya shortly after the revolution when BA resumed its flight there and they revved the engines up to full power with the brakes still on and I think we're only a third of the way down the runway before we would lift off and we climb pretty steep. It's worth adding, I mean, heat seeking missiles such as an SA-7 will go after the engine and airliners as the Belgian captain will attest can survive on one engine alone.
00:28:04
Speaker
So you're not guaranteed to bring down an aircraft with an SA-7. There's also an issue that these things, although they're pretty robust, especially the Russian ones, they have a real problem with batteries. And so they're keeping them in operating condition is quite challenging. And that combination of factors may well explain why we haven't seen more such incidents.
00:28:27
Speaker
That's really interesting. I'm sitting here thinking as we're talking about these kinetic threats, I'm thinking back to your mention that sort of rolling out GPS worldwide after the 80s incident was big in helping these airlines stay away from conflict zones. And I'm thinking that now as we're increasingly seeing GPS spoofing and electronic warfare kind of taking place in gray zone warfare instances. So I'm thinking the Black Sea, I'm thinking Straits of Hormuz, I'm thinking the South China Sea. Is there an increasing risk to airliners in these non-kinetic ways?
00:28:55
Speaker
that are operating in these less than lethal conflict zones that sort of isn't being accounted for when we talk about the man pads or the book missiles. I mean, I'm not entirely sure why people do this GPS spoofing and other electronic warfare, because I don't think it's intended to lure aircraft into trouble. I my view is that by largely threats are more of a nuisance than a significant threat. The community and all does talk to each other.
00:29:22
Speaker
I mean, the rule of aviation security is you talk to each other as much as possible, but there's a caveat on that. So people are aware that there is there are incidents going on in the kind of places you mention and the crew will double check and indeed dead reckoning is still quite useful art and they will do this to never trust your instruments alone.
Airline Safety Measures and Intelligence Role
00:29:51
Speaker
You have been listening to How to Get on a Watchlist, the new podcast series from Encyclopedia Geopolitica. If you liked this show, don't forget to check out our other content at Encyclopedia Geopolitica, which you can find by going to howtogettontawatchlist.com. We can find our analysis on various geopolitical issues, as well as reading lists covering topics like those discussed in the podcast.
00:30:15
Speaker
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00:30:26
Speaker
So as you mentioned in your case studies before, the downing of MH17 seems particularly due to an oversight that permitted the plane to be passing through a contested piece of airspace. So what sort of intelligence or security measures do airlines usually take to avoid these high risk zones? You've talked about that as one of the biggest measures you can take to keep safe.
00:30:46
Speaker
How is that decision made? Is it something being driven by airliners' own private intelligence teams? Or do governments and security services also play a role in determining high-risk flight paths? Analyzing a war zone threat is not immensely difficult. Airlines need to ask themselves the following really quite simple questions.
00:31:06
Speaker
Is there some kind of war going on? If so, is at least one side of one party using military aviation as part of their combat set? And if they are, does the other have the means to attack hostile aircraft at high altitude? And if the answer to all of these is yes, then probably it's best to not go anywhere near that area.
00:31:29
Speaker
I do say if you wander into a pub and there's a fight going on, probably the best thing to do is to leave that pub rather than stay and order a drink.
00:31:39
Speaker
You're not intended to be the target, but you could well be the innocent victim. You don't really need government's help on this. Although, as I said earlier, I think where governments did miss a trick on MH17 is thinking that the threat, which was well known, was purely to military aircraft rather than to anyone who might be in the general area. Since MH17, I think governments have learned their lesson and there is a tendency for
00:32:04
Speaker
what are called notams, he's noticed to aviators, to reflect an overabundance of caution. As happened when a Hamas rocket flew over Tel Aviv airport and the American authorities banned flights for a number of days. But in the view of BA, that was unnecessary and we carried on flying it to Tel Aviv.
00:32:26
Speaker
There are nuances. Airlines do want to keep flying routes as long as possible, both for the revenue and because flying alternative routes can get very expensive. So if you can mitigate the risks, you can look at other factors that could be relevant. So one question, is there a time of day when the risk might be lower?
00:32:45
Speaker
The Israelis attacked targets in Syria at night, not during the day. And so Syrian anti-aircraft missiles get fired at night and not during the day. In the case of Tripoli Airport, which was always at high risk of being attacked by one of the warring militia or other, any attack was almost certain to kick off early in the morning. That's when attacks start. So if nothing was happening at 11 o'clock in the morning, it was highly improbable that it would.
00:33:15
Speaker
And indeed when the aircraft was attacked in July 2014 and multiple aircraft were destroyed on the ground.
00:33:20
Speaker
it kicked off early in the morning. So if you've got systems in place, particularly when you might only be on the ground for an hour to check the airport is safe operating, that there is nothing hostile around, then you can reduce your risk down pretty extensively. There will always be a residual risk, but you can manage this and you can mitigate it and you can therefore keep flying to difficult places because often the difficult places earn more money for the airline and the easy ones.
00:33:50
Speaker
Speaking to that point, William, of mitigating risk, are there any kind of countermeasure systems similar to what military aircraft have that are available for commercial aircraft? Earlier this year, it was revealed, I think, that FedEx was petitioning the US FAA to allow them to install some countermeasures. Is that a common feature? Is that something that airliners seek? I think not. They're expensive. They often mean sticking something under the fuselage, and that adds to drag, fuel costs,
00:34:20
Speaker
most of the time and you're going to have to equip every aircraft in the fleet with that because of course your aircraft that flies one day from New York to Buenos Aires flies the next day in New York to Tel Aviv. There's no risk on the Buenos Aires route, there is a risk on the Tel Aviv route and these things can't be bolted on and off. So I think the answer is probably not
00:34:43
Speaker
I mean, the Israelis might think that they live in a permanent area of risk, and therefore it is worth it. But I think for most people, it wouldn't make any commercial sense. And if you consider there to be a risk, you just stop flying there.
00:34:58
Speaker
So what about the pilot and staff training approach? You know, you talked about, especially with the Baghdad case, what sounds like some cool headedness in the cockpit. Is there a way to counter this kind of threat through cockpit activities? I don't think as much you can do if you spot a missile coming towards you, it's traveling considerably faster than you are. And the modern ones can follow every maneuver and these planes are not going to do a loop-de-loop to get out of trouble. And you probably won't see it. But of course,
00:35:25
Speaker
What pilots are extensively trained to do is to deal with the loss of one and even two engines. And one of the reasons that pilots need to go regularly into flight simulators is so that they can practice and be tested on precisely the kind of situation
00:35:45
Speaker
that will never ever happen to them, they hope, in real life. But engine failure, and as we've seen, you know, Bird Strike took out two engines of a plane that landed in the Hudson River. Fuel failure meant that a BA plane coming into Heathrow
00:36:01
Speaker
suddenly found itself with no fuel and managed just to get over the fence. The pilots were trained to deal with loss of power, loss of controls and clearly this Belgian pilot, all that training, steering an aircraft using its engines, came very useful.
00:36:17
Speaker
So moving off of some of the hard security threats now, we're seeing these persistent delays and interruptions at global airports as airports are struggling to retain staff following sort of the COVID disruptions and layoffs. At what points are we facing risks here in terms of staff shortages, maintainers, baggage loaders, things like that? Is that a risk that you're accounting for as part of this external sort of threat planning that you're doing?
00:36:42
Speaker
And the way airports work is that the security function is separate from airlines, and it needs to be, and is overseen by governments, always even in a lot of countries is done by a government agency. So airlines should not be able to take shortcuts. And the main result of security delays is that passengers miss flights. And the message is get to your airport three, four hours early, as opposed to 45 minutes early,
00:37:12
Speaker
There is anecdotal evidence, and I'm not going to name the names of airports, where security staff are known to drop their usual standards because of excessive workloads, and where we British Airways were aware of this, either through local management saying that they were worried
00:37:30
Speaker
say we're keeping an eye on the process or our security audits, we would insist on separate checks which we would finance ourselves. So you may have seen, I don't know if you fly from somewhere like Beirut, that you may find you've gone through central security and then you go through security again at the gate. And that security may well be
00:37:52
Speaker
organized and financed and managed by the airline itself because of lack of confidence in the process. And it is above all a deterrent, but it seems to be working pretty good.
00:38:05
Speaker
So we're seeing threats shift and evolve and something that really caught my eye in the recent novel by Kim Stanley Robinson, the Ministry for the Future, which includes an eco-terrorist group. And as climate change advocacy gains steam, are aviation security teams considering this as a potential emerging threat? Are there other emerging threats out there that they're monitoring for? Is this something you've seen in your work? I'm not aware of any climate activist threat to actual aircraft.
00:38:35
Speaker
But they do have a record of trying to disrupt airport operations. There was a case a number of years ago where they chained themselves to a runway fence at London Heathrow. Another political group had its van break down in the tunnel to the central area and caused absolute chaos. And I think these are the means for a climate group.
00:38:57
Speaker
I mean, I appreciate some of them are cases where they may get into balance, but to take down an aircraft, I think that would be even beyond their pale. Whereas for a terrorist group, taking down an aircraft is what you do. And I often think that one of Al Qaeda's problems after 9-11 was how do we beat that? That's what success looks like. That's really hard to beat.
00:39:23
Speaker
So I suppose that cues us up very nicely for our final question. You know, someone who's spent a long time working and thinking about these issues, what keeps someone like you up at night about this threat? I try not to lose too much sleep. I think you've got to keep a perspective on it. The Paris attacks kept me up at night. These were the ones that against the nightclub and instead the France Bataclan. But mainly because we had emergency team calls every two hours.
00:39:50
Speaker
through the night working out what we were going to do about the operation the next day and what we should do about the crew who were over nighting in Paris. And my view was very much the threat has by now passed. They've done their stuff. So it was safe for crew to go out for dinner and it was safe for British Airways to operate the next day. One American airline
00:40:12
Speaker
and I won't name them, wanted armed protection on their crew buses. I mean, in my view, that was one, completely unnecessary, and two, the French would never, ever have allowed it. So not that much. I think the answer is that in terms of the war threat, we pretty well know what the threat is, and we should now all be thinking ahead and managing it.
Government Role in Security and Conclusion
00:40:34
Speaker
And BA was not overflying Ukraine at the time. My predecessor in BA
00:40:40
Speaker
had stopped BA over flying Georgia in 2008 when there was a similar military crisis going on. So we had already these sort of well-established procedures and saying, that's an area, can we avoid it? Let's do so. Where terrorism comes into it, and you asked me about the extent to which governments are involved. And I said that airlines should be able to analyze a war threat for themselves, but in so far as potential terrorist attacks,
00:41:08
Speaker
By definition, the airline will not know about those.
00:41:11
Speaker
These are carefully planned secret operations. Now, governments may and governments do indeed have a role in when they learn about a threat as they did with the liquids plot and the subsequent laptop plots. They then come and talk to airlines about what you do to mitigate and to defend against that. But the airline itself can't be expected to know about an incipient terrorist threat.
00:41:40
Speaker
what keeps me awake at night. I tended to worry more about safety of crew on the ground. We know that hotels are at risk. We know that, you know, the Marriott in Islamabad got blown up. A number of hotels in Jakarta were attacked. The hotel in Sri Lanka was recently attacked. Hotels in Abuja were threatened. Hotels are relatively easy targets.
00:42:06
Speaker
and they have open doors. So I would tend to worry more about crew safety and crew transport than I would about the violent threat to aircraft. William, thank you so much. This has been a fascinating conversation. I feel significantly reassured that we have someone like you on the case keeping an eye on all these threats. And thank you very much for taking time to join us today. Well, it's been a pleasure. Thank you.
00:42:31
Speaker
You've been listening to the How to Get on a Watchlist podcast. Today's guest, William Sandover, has been talking to us about aviation security threats. Our producers for this episode was Edwin Tran, and our researchers were Alex Smith and Analay Agarwal. Thanks very much for listening.