By Roni Tidhar -Head - Int’l Consulting Services at IAA. Israel Airports Authority

 

In our cutting-edge technological era - Why we are still witnessing incidents in which a civilian aircrafts are gunned down by “mistake”? Should we be worried?

 

We are living in a super advanced era in which monitoring, control and identification systems allow us accuracy rates never seen before; controlling satellites in space, high resolution navigation systems (GPS) and sophisticated communication systems are at the grasp of almost every country and airline. 

 

So, why do we encounter events, from time to time, in which civilian passenger’s aircrafts are being shot-down by ‘Surface to Air’ (SA) missiles? Is it always a matter of purely “bad luck” or maybe our answers lye in other fields? Should we, as costumers of the ever-growing** travel industry, be more concerned about that? 

 

This review focuses on airlines’ aircrafts that where identified mistakenly or negligently as “enemy” military aircraft or as an offensive cruise missile, and due to that, where targeted by “Defence Forces” of some nature. Within the article I will review several past incidents, include my personal perspective, and offer some action alternatives for decision makers to consider. 

 

There was no preliminary sign that morning of October 4th, 2001. It was just another routine day at Ben-Gurion Int’l Airport (TLV) with passengers en-route their destinations while airport staff are doing their best to check them in properly. Around 12:45pm airport’s directors started to receive phone calls informing us about info that flight SBI18212 Siberian Airlines (today identified as S7) destined to Novosibirsk, that departed the airport earlier around 10:00am – had vanished from radar screens at some point along its route. I can still remember the chill running down my spine from the sound of those words that no aviation industry professional is ready to hear someday.

 

Considering the fact that it occurred less than a month after 9/11 mega terror attack, and while civil aviation is still in a state of shock and slowly recovering from the consequences of that event – the pace and reaction here in the airport were both obviously influenced. Being a manager within the ranks of the airport’s security division team (and especially in Israel) – my colleagues and I immediately assumed it was a terror related event, but silently hoping it was “just” a malfunction of the aircraft…

To read the full article click here