Making All Threats Public Would Play Into Terrorists’ Hands, Airline Experts Say

If travelers were warned every time there is a sabotage threat to an airliner, it would mean chaos to an international aviation system already operating “under severe strain,” industry representatives argued Friday.

The burden would fall on passengers as well as the airlines, they said. Carried to an extreme, they said such a practice would give one man with a telephone and a sick mind the ability to virtually shut down a system that now carries half a million air travelers daily across national frontiers.

Public warnings “will be an issue” in the wake of this week’s Pan Am crash in southwest Scotland, predicted David Kyd, information director of the International Air Transport Assn. But he added in a telephone interview from IATA headquarters in Geneva: “That would be playing right into (terrorists’) hands. And it would create turmoil for the world economy and tourism and everything.”

A London-based airline executive who spoke on condition of anonymity echoed Kyd, saying that the impact would be particularly severe at moments such as today, in the aftermath of an air catastrophe.

‘Sick Folk Come Out’

“At a time like this, all the sick folk come out from under the mat,” the executive said. “If there were a requirement to notify the public of every threat, we and everybody else could just as well shut down.”

While the cause of Wednesday’s crash of Pan American World Airways Flight 103 is still uncertain, it is known that the jumbo jet broke up without apparent warning while cruising at 31,000 feet. The accident occurred 16 days after an anonymous telephone caller told the American Embassy in Helsinki, Finland, that there would be a pre-Christmas bomb attack on a Pan Am flight out of Frankfurt.

Flight 103 originated in Frankfurt on a Boeing 727 aircraft, changing to the doomed Boeing 747 during a London stopover for the final leg to New York.

Washington considered the threat serious enough to relay it to dozens of its diplomatic missions in Western Europe and elsewhere, to U.S. air carriers serving Europe, and to friendly governments. A notice was posted 10 days ago on a bulletin board in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, and as a result, a dozen employees there reportedly changed their travel plans.

Concern About Panic

Largely for fear of causing panic on the basis of threats that often turn out to be unfounded, however, Washington has adopted a policy of concentrating on foiling terrorist attacks rather than warning the public about them.

In fact, the alert bulletin that was communicated to embassies and airlines after the Dec. 5 anonymous call in Helsinki contained a specific restriction against publicizing the warning. “The information in this bulletin is solely for the use of U.S. carriers and airport security personnel and may not be further disseminated without the specific approval of the director of civil aviation security,” it said.

The failure to alert travelers has stirred anger among relatives of those killed on Flight 103 and controversy in Washington.

But if anything, the issue is even more volatile in Europe, which is the hub of the international travel most threatened by terrorists.

Of last year’s more than 1 billion journeys on scheduled air carriers, about 200 million were on international flights, IATA’s Kyd said. About 100 of the world’s 600 major international airports are in Europe, where on any given summer day, 12,000 flights take to the air. About 22 million passengers travel across the Atlantic annually, half of them Americans.

‘Almost Daily’ Threats

Kyd said that terrorist threats are an “almost daily” occurrence, but only those “that seem to have some substance” become the subject of Federal Aviation Administration warnings. “Each time, the experts have to stare at it (a reported threat) and ask themselves how far to ratchet up security.”

So far this year, the FAA has reportedly issued 24 alerts similar to the one distributed after the Dec. 5 anonymous telephone call was received in Finland.

Only the airlines of countries that are especially threatened, such as El Al of Israel, make a routine practice of taking extraordinarily stringent security precautions. It means “a tremendous amount of additional hassle,” Kyd said. El Al passengers must check in for their flights an extra hour ahead of normal check-in time, and each is interviewed by security agents. All luggage is inspected.

El Al’s record of success in coping with threatened terrorist attacks is the envy of the industry. However, the IATA official asserted, for all carriers to adopt such procedures on a routine basis “would be impossible if you’re going to try and keep the system functioning.”

“The system is already under severe strain” with the current, high-level of security checks, Kyd commented, noting that last summer there were delays of up to 50 hours on some holiday flights leaving Britain.

Possibility of Backfire

Meanwhile, he said, routine notification of travelers every time there is a security alert could backfire.

“People might just become blase,” he said. Also, by alerting the public, an airline or government would also be alerting a real terrorist, which would only encourage him to shift his attack to a different airline.

“The main practical difficulty is that you’d be playing catch-up all the time,” Kyd said.

What should Pan Am or any other airline under similar circumstances do, another industry official asked rhetorically. “Do they shut down the airline for two weeks? Then the terrorists are winning.”

“In the short term,” Kyd conceded, a practice of publicizing security alerts would cut down on passenger traffic. The effect is already clear after disasters such as the one that occurred Wednesday. “But after a while, (the figures) come up again. In our experience, the impact is short term and it depends a lot on nationality. Many nationalities are more fatalistic,” Kyd said.