Only 1 in 50 with airplane access searched, inquiry hears

Fewer than 2% of airport workers with unsupervised access to planes are subjected to searches, Senator Colin Kenny told the Air India inquiry in Ottawa Friday.
Kenny said the potential for a security breach is so high that the government should move immediately to screen every worker who gets near aircraft across the country.
"If there is one thing I could fix tomorrow, it is non-passenger screening," Kenny told Commissioner John Major.
Kenny, chairman of the Senate committee on national security and defence, said workers can take lunches, gym bags or tool boxes right up to planes without anyone looking inside.
Random searches are carried out on about one of 50 "airside" workers, he told the inquiry probing the June 23, 1985, Air India bombing.
"We believe that every time an individual is going airside to work around aircraft, they should be searched in the way a passenger was searched," Kenny said.
Kenny admitted to Raj Anand, a lawyer for victims' families, that Canada reacted with more urgency after the 2001 U.S. terrorist attacks than it did in 1985 when Sikh extremists in B.C. targeted Air India and killed 331 in two bombings.
"I feel ashamed to say it but I feel that there was a sense that it wasn't Canadians who were involved," Kenny said.
Earlier Friday, a lawyer representing relatives of Air India bombing victims suggested that Canadians should be informed when an airline flying within the country has terrorist threats against it.
Norm Boxall said companies recall products all the time or warn of a safety issue.
"Why should we protect the commercial interests of that airline? Why shouldn't the customer know the threat?" Boxall asked.
Despite months of threats of sabotage and bombing directed at Air India in the mid-1980s, customers of the airline were never told.
01/06/07 National Post, Canada

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Categories: Air India Jun 2007, Foreign Jun 2007, Safety Jun 2007