Extra airport security 'very difficult', say experts

Installing the type of security at airports to combat terrorism of the kind attempted on the Christmas Day Detroit bound US flight could be extremely costly and take a very long time, aviation experts said today.

It would need a whole new set of equipment which would have to be acquired at great cost and then installed at airports, said aviation expert Kieran Daly.

He went on: “The global task of getting that equipment installed will be very, very difficult within the sort of timescale that is required.”

However he added that yesterday’s attempted attack was, in a sense, “not all bad news”.

Mr Daly went on: “The latest incident could in some respects be described as a success in that it shows that would-be terrorists are now having to resort to trying to get very small devices onboard planes.

“Thanks to increased security, the sort of devices are now not big enough to actually bring down a plane. The terrorists have had to resort to more and more inadequate devices and they are a very long way from actually bringing down an aircraft.”

Mr Daly, the former editor of internet news service Air Transport Intelligence, said that security was also being helped by the fact that terrorists, seeking maximum publicity and impact, were concentrating on the very airport and routes where security was actually at its most efficient.

He went on: “It would be far easier for the bombers to single out, say, a third world route, where perhaps security was not so tight.

“But they want to go for the maximum amount of publicity and for high profile routes instead.”