Ladder checks for safety in the skies

New Delhi: The Mumbai terror attacks have finally jolted the government to take steps to secure the common man in the skies. The government has decided to conduct ladder point security checks for all airlines at all of India’s airports.
Also, sky marshals (armed guards trained by the NSG) are being increased across domestic flights to sensitive areas.
Civil aviation minister Praful Patel announced these measures after a comprehensive review of security across all Indian airports and for all airlines. He also emphasised that all other necessary precautions, including biometric access control, would be implemented while maintaining that these steps would cause minimum inconvenience to passengers.
“We request all passengers to cooperate”, he said. The ladder point checks would be done jointly by the airport security personnel and airline staff but the minister did not give a timeline for these measures to be implemented.
While declining to divulge details on sky marshals due to security reasons, Patel said their deployment is not mandatory as of now on all flights. “But we would increase their numbers on domestic flights”.
Patel’s assertions on sky marshals come even as there is a shortage of these highly trained personnel. So, it remains to be seen how and by when the government can increase their numbers on domestic flights.
18/12/08 Sindhu Bhattacharya/Daliy News & Analysis

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Categories: Safety Dec 2008