Essay - Aviation Security and Its Impact on Airports the Economic Prosperity...

Aviation Security and its Impact on Airports

The ec*****omic prosperity and the security of ***** US depend to a large extent upon the world's airspace utilization by the Nation and its global partners ***** the safe and secure operations of its aviation system. There are innumerable threats and perils for the Air Domain. The catastrophic events ***** 9/11 and the August 2006 Heathrow plot are blatant reminders of ***** dangers facing the aviation industry and ***** ability and intent ***** enemies who wish to harm the ***** and its people. The main originators of threat are the criminals, the terrorists ***** the hostile-nations; and there ***** three ***** categories ***** threats- hostile exploitation of cargo, threat to the Aviation Transportation System infrastructure ***** *****s to and from ***** aircrafts. ***** is a wide array ***** probable threat scenarios at various types of airport facilities that require caution. Placing ***** explosives inside or near the passenger *****; targeting commuter concentrations at commercial airp*****ts, targeting multi-use airports, ***** instance those which combine military ***** commercial operations or general and commercial aviation ***** where ********** is a co-existence of dissimilar security procedures and unrelated security authorities, are some ***** the tactics used by terrorists. ("National Strategy for Aviation Security," 2007)

***** danger and threat to commercial aviation is nothing new now, it has become sort of routine; there has been no change in the basic modes of attack. In July, 1968, the very first terrorist hijacking for the purpose of political ex*****rtion took place. The ***** first terrorist bombing of an airliner in mid-air took place in May, 1949. In June, 1968 the ***** armed attack ***** place on ***** *****-*****-ground airliner and the initial indiscriminate ***** attack occurred in May, 1972 on air ********** at an airport. Classified as per the target, commercial ***** assault can be carried out against airline offices, airliners ***** airports. It is apparent that the most common target in commercial aviation attacks has been ***** airliners. During the 50 year period from 1947-1996 the attack on airliners were 1,098 as compared to 249 airline ***** *****s and 129 airport attacks. The airline office and ***** attack are *****t done ***** any private party but is a terrorist group tactic. *****se attacks started surfacing only after 1968 when international terrorism started growing. The attacks ***** also be classified according to the mode of operation used. The main ones ***** armed assaults, bombing and hijacking. *****re were 959 incidents of hijacking during the 50 year period, i.e. hijacking contributed almost 87 percent of all the airliner attacks. (Wilkinson; Jenkins, 2003) critical constituent ***** the nation's physical *****, overall ***** and economic foundation l*****s in the safety and security of the civil ***** system ***** the nation. In order to attain such a safe environment, nations spend billions of dollars and multitude of policies and programs are ********** ***** upkeep ***** security. The U.S. General Accounting Office -- GAO tried to analyze the weaknesses in their aviation security system after