NBP: Nauka, bezbednost, policija (Jan 2016)
Aircraft hijacking as a security threat to civil aviation
Abstract
Aircraft (airplane) hijacking is unauthorized and unlawful act directed against an aircraft, aircraft personnel, passengers, as well as airport and navigation devices. With regards to possible forms of civil aviation endangerment, aircraft hijacking takes the first place. The most prominent security threat to civil aviation regarding aircraft hijacking includes hijackings which lead to aircraft crashes and hijackings as a form of suicidal terrorist act of violence committed by the hijacked aircraft, which result in killing of hundreds of innocent people and destruction of property. Aircraft hijacking is undeniably one of the terrorist methods of action which requires high expertise and considerable organizational capacity of a terrorist group in assessing, preparation, organization and implementation of specific activities of hijacking, as well as further negotiations which are conducted in order to achieve political goals. This is explicitly shown by the examples of many hijackings and their harmful consequences on passengers and property, as 1,185 hijackings occurred in the period from 1920 to 2011 (475 in the period from 1970-1979). Among these it should particularly point out the suicide terrorist attacks by simultaneously hijacked civil aircraft on military-political and residential-business facilities in the USA on September 11, 2001, when about 3,000 people were killed and considerable material damage was inflicted. The mentioned indicators suggest that aircraft hijacking is not the problem of one nation or one region, but the entire world and that they become a dangerous game which endangers security and progress of the international civil aviation, but also of the international security in general. This has contributed to more intensive efforts of the international community, which resulted in adoption of Resolution 1373 dated September 28, 2011, by which all UN Security Council member states are obliged to condemn terrorism, to fight against it, to cooperate with each other, to bring the terrorists to justice and extradite them to other states. However, in addition to enabling legislation in the mentioned area at the international level and its full implementation at the national level, it is required to make additional efforts important for more comprehensive preservation and improvement of civil aviation security. Accordingly, within elaboration of determinants of phenomenology of endangering civil aviation security by aircraft hijacking, the paper considers historiographic dimension of the phenomenon, then considers its time and geospatial distribution, causes, motives and stages of hijacking, as well as conduct in case of aircraft hijacking, offering the following concrete conclusions: In order to have more effective and more efficient fight against aircraft hijacking, it is necessary to work on material-technical equipment, i.e. instalment of the state-of-the art security equipment at airports and in aircraft; It is also necessary to improve expert education curricula, to train and educate security workers, cabin and flight personnel, logistic services and services of physical and technical security at airports and other subjects in charge of control and protection of air traffic according to the latest curricula. The outcomes of the above mentioned curricula, among other things, should contribute to raising competence of the accountable security subjects as well as aircraft industry for more effective and more efficient practical decision-making during security crisis management caused by aircraft hijacking at operative, tactical and strategic levels, and consequently more adequate opposing to terrorists, criminals and adventurists who use aircraft hijacking as an efficient method of unlawful action.
