KUALA LUMPUR, March 26 — The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 through “deliberate action” despite layers of security technology is prompting experts to ask if a humble air marshal could help make air travel safer.
While police conducting a criminal investigation are yet to determine if the Beijing-bound plane fell foul to hijacking, sabotage, psychological issues or personal problems of the 239 people on board, one expert believes that one well-trained individual on board could make a crucial difference in such a scenario.
“Properly trained and deployed air marshals provide a critical last line of defence in a hijacking incident in-flight or on the ground,” former US air marshal Marcus Wynne told The Malay Mail Online in a recent email interview.
“Not having air marshals means that all other security measures cannot fail; obviously they do on occasion. Air marshals can provide the ultimate fail-safe procedure,” added Wynne, who served from 1989 to 1993, during the First Gulf War, in the US Federal Air Marshal Program, which was then part of the Civil Aviation Security Branch of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
According to Wynne, the duties of an air marshal — depending on country and whether their deployment is overt or covert — include profiling passengers pre-boarding; inspecting the aircraft pre-boarding for explosives; surveilling suspicious individuals before, during and after a flight; intervening against those interfering with flight crew or endangering the aircraft short of a hijacking; as well as stopping hijackers from taking control of an aircraft.
“In sum, all human efforts to prevent a hijacking while in flight or on the ground,” he said.
International terrorism expert Professor Adam Dolnik from Australia’s University of Wollongong stressed, however, that air marshals are just one part in the available range of air travel security measures.
“It’s one of the steps, but it’s not fool-proof,” Dolnik told The Malay Mail Online in a recent phone interview.
He added that Flight MH370 was probably not hijacked, pointing out that pilot suicide — among the possibilities under investigation by Malaysian police — was a more likely one.
The Czech-born researcher stressed that the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the US altered the dynamics of hijackings, turning passengers now fearful of death at the hands of hijackers into more effective deterrent than air marshals.
“Before September 11, we were told to sit down, shut up, and if you get hijacked, don’t do anything. After [September 11], the prospect of being flown into a building and getting killed is very high.
“So if somebody makes a hijacking, unless they have a machine gun, they’ll find it very hard to hold off passengers. If you have a few people with knives, it just wouldn’t do the trick,” said Dolnik.
The professor said the US air marshal service was beefed up after the 2001 attacks in which four planes were hijacked and two crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, but noted that the armed guards protecting American aircraft for decades before then had not prevented the incident.
The al Qaeda attacks also spurred other countries like Australia and Singapore to deploy armed marshals on some flights.
Ravi Madavaram, an aerospace and defence consultant from consulting firm Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific, stressed that it was difficult to come up with specific recommendations as it is still unclear what caused the plane to go missing.
He said, however, that air marshals and satellite technology are among the various security measures being considered for airlines.
“People are even considering things like (how) pilots should not have the capability to switch off the transponder,” Ravi told The Malay Mail Online, referring to the onboard radio transmitter in the cockpit that relays the aircraft’s position, altitude and identity to ground controllers.
On MH370, investigators believe both the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) and transponder were disabled by someone on the flight, rendering the plane invisible to commercial radar used by ground controllers.
Ravi said that a proposal to replace secondary radar — which is currently the main surveillance method for air traffic control networks around the world — with a satellite system called Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B) was also being bandied about.
“All these things have a cost impact, operational impact, and regulatory part to it; all of them have to be considered,” he said.
Australia’s ABC News reported last Saturday that the ease with which Flight MH370 vanished highlighted the deficiencies of ground-based radar and radio communications in planes, quoting experts as saying that satellite-based navigation and communication was the way to go.
An overhaul of air traffic control systems, however, is costly, said the report, noting that funding constraints have prevented many airlines from adopting the ADS-B surveillance system.
According to ABC News, the US aerospace industry has been pushing for a US$40 billion overhaul of air traffic control systems, but the effort is being hampered by the complexity and cost of the undertaking.
But air marshals are not necessarily cheaper to implement. Since its introduction in the 1960s, the air marshal programme has cost the US approximately US$860 million (RM2.8 billion at current exchange rates), according to one American lawmaker’s estimation.
Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chairman Datuk Nur Jazlan Mohamed told The Malay Mail Online recently that a comprehensive re-evaluation of aviation security and border control was necessary in light of the MH370 crisis.
But he stressed that it was also crucial to have a cost-benefit analysis when considering such proposals.
Using the highest level of security would “cost a lot of money”, said the Pulai MP.
When asked if Malaysia would consider introducing air marshals, acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said that the disappearance of the jetliner has prompted a re-examination of the global aviation industry as a whole, including on aspects of security and surveillance.
But he told a televised press conference yesterday that specific proposals can only be looked at once the plane is found, saying: “Even experts around the world cannot tell me more unless we have more information, and that must come from the plane itself”.
