British Airways Chairman Seeks Joint US-EU Airport Security System That IDs 'Good Guys'

    Sept. 26, 2006
    The European model of 'open skies' would extend to ownership rights.

    Source via NewsEdge

    The United States and European Union must fully open their airways to competition and forge a joint system for screening passengers that identifies "good guys" with biometric technology, the chairman of British Airways said Monday.

    "Investing in a system that pre-screens the good guys, and rewards them by using biometrics to provide a hassle-free passage through EU and U.S. airports, will allow resources to be focused on the potential bad guys," Martin Broughton said in a speech to the Irish Institute of European Affairs in Dublin.

    Broughton said the future strength of international aviation required the United States and European Union to abandon any protectionist policies, permit airlines full access to each other's markets and design a trans-Atlantic security system that recognizes and fast-tracks passengers not deemed a terrorist threat.

    "This would be a form of profiling, an acceptable form based on efficient programs allowing pre-screened travelers faster access, rather than the unacceptable form of ethnic profiling," he said, referring to a policy of scrutinizing passengers based on their national or racial background.

    He said current passenger-screening systems in U.S. and European airports were exploiting different kinds of cutting-edge technology, but in an uncoordinated fashion that would prove unnecessarily costly and inefficient. He cited U.S. efforts to develop a "registered traveler program" that brands some air travelers as safe and unworthy of security screening, and a security checkpoint at London's Heathrow airport that uses a beam into the eye of a passenger to prove their identity.

    "Before these trials grow too large and become costly to replace, we need to see a single trans-Atlantic system developed that covers both security screening and immigration," he said.

    "The EU and U.S. are in this together. We face the same threat to the same passengers, traveling on the same airlines, using the same aircraft, on the same routes, from the same airports," he said.

    Broughton was speaking in his capacity as joint chairman of a committee of corporate leaders called the TransAtlantic Business Dialogue. The group, currently composed of 32 chairmen and chief executives of U.S. and European companies, was formed a decade ago by the European Commission and the U.S. Commerce Department to promote U.S.-EU economic cooperation.

    Broughton accused the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush of lacking resolve to negotiate an "open skies" deal with the European Union. The proposal would bring together the world's two largest aviation markets and 60 percent of global traffic, and promote a much greater range of routes and services between the two continents.

    The negotiations have made no reported progress since 2005, when the United States rejected EU demands for an end to the U.S. policy of requiring U.S.-based airlines not to be majority-owned by foreigners. The European model of "open skies" would extend to ownership rights.

    Broughton said increased fears of terrorism were playing into the hands of those, particularly in the United States, who did not want to open up the U.S. aviation market to greater European competition.

    "The twin issues of terrorism and globalization have combined to create an environment where security measures and protectionist tendencies work together to put up new barriers faster than we can tear them down," he said.

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    On the Net:

    Irish Institute of European Affairs, http://www.iiea.com/

    TransAtlantic Business Dialogue, http://www.tabd.com/

    Copyright: Associated Press WorldStream -- 9/26/06

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