Terrorism May Affect Air Travel Demand — Who Knew?

Oct. 12, 2016

A recent report from IATA suggests that concerns about terrorism have likely slowed the growth of airline passenger demand. Note the phrasing: it’s still growing, just slower than it used to and it’s a supposition based on a “fragile and uncertain economic backdrop, political shocks and a wave of terrorist attacks.” There is also a lawsuit underway by the Competitive Enterprise Institute against TSA’s use of body scanners which claims that travelers seeking to avoid the scanners (not the terrorists) are more likely to drive, resulting in 31 additional roadway deaths each year.

To some extent, such speculative numbers MAY reflect some truth, but they are, indeed, simply speculation by statisticians looking for a hook for their work. Much like profiling terrorists, you can’t prove intent or cause-and-effect before the event – I can think of six reasons I might drive instead of fly, none of which involve aviation security and I typically meet as many as nine of the criteria used by Behavior Detection is Officers for identifying dangerous characters in the queue — one of which, incidentally, is a bad attitude.

I don’t wish to demean the good work of TSA in general, or the screeners and intelligence community in particular; aviation security is a moving target - like three-dimensional chess, whack-a-mole and trick-or-treat rolled into one; you don’t know what the next threat will be, and it can pop up from any direction at any time in any disguise, including from your own team (the insider threat). Just the past 12 months have brought intensive scrutiny on cybersecurity, lasers and drones, each requiring a different concentration of resources and response while not diminishing existing protocols.

It’s worth noting that the EU is just now, 15 years after 9/11, issuing yet another call for cooperation among all its member countries, including an effort to establish common technical standards for security equipment, which in turn creates a need for more commonality among screening protocols… which in turn may call for legislative and/or regulatory revisions among its 28 member countries. This is of particular interest to the United States because it is generally accepted that much of the threat to U.S. interests originates primarily abroad, so improvement of shared intelligence will benefit greatly from a common approach. What are the odds of 28 countries being in full agreement anytime soon? Make that 29, including the U.S.

To illustrate the commonality point, some commercial enterprises within airport terminals are constrained from selling certain items which might be deemed security – unfriendly in some countries, but not others. If your flight originates in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, with connections in FRA, CDG or LHR, you might want to reconsider stopping by the new Kalashnikov store, whose AK-47 assault rifle has armed Russian forces for 70 years. They have opened a store selling model guns - automatic pistols and rifles “very clearly imitations and would pose no security problems.” Yeah. Right.

And finally, to lighten the mood, here’s a sentence from a British newspaper you don’t see every day: “a woman was stopped at airport security screening for carrying her husband’s intestines…”. As improbable as it may seem, there was a marginally rational explanation: she believed he had been poisoned, and was taking them to a laboratory in London for analysis. While they were not specifically listed on the prohibited items list, how they came into her possession is another matter entirely.