Stansted airport is in trouble. First, its operators say, there was a small fire in one of the lounges. This was quickly dealt with in the early hours, but it produced a lot of smoke in the interim. And then, apparently because of a problem with signals on the rails, all trains to and from Stansted have been cancelled. This is a major problem; Stansted is a major airport.
There’s no reason, at this moment in time, to think any of this is out of the ordinary. There have been a fair number of mysterious fires in Britain lately – in warehouses and other places – and there have been plots, according to authorities across the continent, to start fires on planes and possibly to bring them down. But not every fire is suspicious. Similarly, across Europe in recent years, sabotage and cyber attacks have struck train networks in Poland and France. But trains can go wrong for any reason, especially in Britain. There doesn’t necessarily have to be a culprit or an enemy plan behind any problems.
Across Europe, however, airports are facing growing disruption and chaos. A major cyber attack last week has affected airports across the continent. Some staff have been reduced to pen and paper, manually checking in bags and coordinating complex systems. It’s meant long lines and long waits. Despite airport operators following contingency planning, the attack at times ground things to a near standstill. In Oslo and Copenhagen this week, meanwhile, airports have been closed out of a preponderance of caution after a couple of suspected drone sightings. Who knows if one of those drones might attempt to down a plane? No one wants to take the chance.
The War on Terror, which began 24 years ago, precipitated a significant hardening of airports. Before then, security was easy. I have heard a story about an eccentric firearms collector getting on an aircraft with a loaded pistol he’d forgotten about in a big overcoat pocket, only realising he’d had it with him at the other end.
After 11 September 2001, bag and traveller scanning, taking shoes and belts off and removing laptops from bags all became normal. For a time, this iron box approach did correlate with a fall in bombings and hijackings, even when groups such as the Islamic State put a lot of time and energy into trying to revive the practice. Many people might, then, have complacently believed that airports and flights remained safe into this new age – the age of cyber disruption and drone warfare.
This could not be further from the truth. Ours is a world where the compromising of a company which services the aviation sector –one on the other side of the world – can close every airport in Europe, and where a single drone costing £1,000 or less can close Gatwick for a day, costing hundreds of millions of pounds.
Across the world, airport operators are desperately investing in counter-drone measures by training hawks and dogs and buying ‘drone guns’, which don’t actually seem very effective. Legislators have rushed to declare more areas around airports drone-free zones, but this doesn’t stop anyone using a military drone with disruptive intent. Airports are no longer safe.
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