Terrorism, Airports and Threats:
Remarks to the Air Canada Pilots Association's Security Committee

by John Thompson

October 10, 2002

I’d like to thank you for the invitation to address this meeting. Like ever so many airline passengers, I’ve had to put up with those calm quiet tones you airline pilots use when addressing the hoi polloi stuffed in behind you; and wondered if this came naturally or where you trained to speak this way. This is idle curiosity, because it I tried to lecture anybody with that same voice, I’d put my audience to sleep in no time.

The first recorded incident of aviation terrorism was in 1930, when a Pan-American mail plane was hijacked by Peruvian revolutionaries so that they could drop leaflets over Lima. The pilot, Byron D. Richards, talked the gunmen into letting him deliver his mail first, and then refused to do as they asked. He went on to a long career in aviation, and indeed, talked another set of hijackers out of taking his 707 to Cuba in 1961. But aviation terrorism has not always been quite so gentle.

Since 1930, there have been almost a thousand incidents of aviation related terrorism; culminating in the deadliest incident in the history of terrorism on 9-11. Some 800 aircraft have been hijacked by terrorists (or misfits acting out a political agenda of some kind); and over 100 aircraft have been damaged or destroyed by a bomb. Beyond these, there have been attacks on airport lobbies, mortar and bomb attacks on parked aircraft and plots to shoot down jetliners with missiles.

Airports and aircraft offer a series of highly attractive targets to terrorists and insurgents. National carriers for different nations; the high value of aircraft themselves; the concentrations of people — again often representing different nationalities -- and the automatic news coverage than aviation related terrorism generates all contribute to this.

Aircraft are expensive, sometimes vulnerable, and carry a larger concentration of people than almost any other variety of target. A hand-grenade or simple pipe bomb might — at best — kill a dozen or so people in a train station or movie theatre; the same amount of explosive can bring down an airliner with 300 people on it. Thus for a group with limited resources, aviation still represents the chance of delivering what appears to be a major attack.

There has been a wide variety of terrorist attacks on aviation; and the emerging power of some major terrorist networks add future threats that should be considered. These include:

1. Hijacking of an aircraft for Suicide Attack: The enormous number of deaths and the material damage caused on September 11^th last year means that this tactic will assuredly be attempted again in future. While suicide attackers have been rare (until recent years) among terrorist groups, both the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and sundry Islamic Fundamentalist groups have learned how to recruit or manufacture such attackers. There are also some grounds for speculation that the Egypt Air aircraft whose co-pilot pushed the plane into the sea might have been a suicide attack; although this is a very debatable point.
2. Hijacking of an aircraft for Hostages/Ransom: Up until the mid 1970s, this was the most common form of aviation terrorism, and there have been few successful forms of this activity since then. Currently, a successful hijacking depends on having a sanctuary area — an area where the normal conventions of international law has little influence, and the local authorities are weak or non-existent.
3. Bombing of an aircraft. A common form of terrorism and, until September 11^th, the most lethal one. The deadliest attack had been the 1985 Air India Bombing (along with the concurrent Narita Airport Bombing) with killed 329 people on a flight originating from Toronto. Richard Reid, the "shoe-bomber" is the latest wrinkle in this form of attack, as suicide bombers — especially with explosive sneakers — have not been seen before this.
4. Massacres in Airports: Airports are harder to secure than aircraft themselves are, and a crowd of passengers — especially when posed in front of the national carrier of a targeted nation — are a vulnerable target. Passengers in Tel Aviv and Rome have been attacked, and a recent shooting incident at Los Angeles International might be categorized as an attack of this type.
5. Attempts to Down Aircraft with Anti-Aircraft Weapons. Man-portable anti-aircraft missiles like the SAM-7 Strella or Stinger could cause significant damage to an airliner on take-off. SAM-7s (and perhaps follow-on Russian missiles like SAM-14 or SAM-16) are widely available. In 1972 in Rome, a number of Arab terrorists were intercepted by police as they positioned themselves near the edge of the runway with SAM-7s.

6. Attacks on Parked Aircraft: Airliners are both expensive and relatively fragile; an attack on a parked aircraft can cause considerable damage especially to a smaller nation. In 2001, an assault on the Airport at Colombo by an LTTE squad destroyed about half of the inventory of the Sri Lankan national airline — and causing much additional damage in terms of lost tourism, higher insurance premiums, etc. Some people might recall Dawson’s Field in Jordan, when Palestinian aligned groups blew up four jetliners that they had hijacked after releasing the passengers.
7. Shelling of Airports: Airports are large sites with wide perimeters; which are difficult to secure. The IRA used a series of improvised mortars (made with gas cylinders on time delay fuzes) in the mid-1990s to hit Heathrow and Gatwick; while these attacks did no real material damage they did result in long periods of interrupted operations for these vital airports.
8. Biological Attacks: It is inevitable that terrorists will use effective biological weapons at some time in the future — probably the near future. An Airport would make an excellent site for a bioweapon release — particularly if the weapon is a communicable one that uses people as a vector (smallpox for example). Infected passengers or air crew could first transmit the illness to others on the aircraft and then all of them could go on to spread it in other cities. As many of you know, a long flight can provide an ideal opportunity for the spread of disease within an aircraft, as can be witnessed by the crews that became exposed to TB when ferrying Kosovar Refugees.
9. Chemical/Biotoxin Attacks: While there are a variety of vulnerable sites that offer large numbers of people for the terrorist use of chemical or biotoxin weapons, the economic and political value of an airport would also make it a likely target for such an attack.
10. Use of an airport to facilitate fund-raising activities by a terrorist group: Most modern major terrorist groups participate in organized criminal activities to generate funding for their campaigns. These may include involvement in narcotics, human trafficking and people smuggling, the use of counterfeit credit cards, consumer fraud, and large-scale involvement in automobile theft. Naturally, all of these activities can be present at any international airport.

Now, are all these threats possible in Canada, and might they happen at Pearson?

Certainly there are terrorist groups present in Canada beyond our own homegrown anarchists, Supremacists, Animal Rights extremists and radicalized aboriginals.

Sikh terrorists have a presence in Canada; although their numbers appear to be diminishing since the days of the Air India Bombing.

Toronto is the largest Sri Lankan Tamil city in the World, and the LTTE’s political and fundraising elements control most of their community life.

Canada’s Muslim population has been growing dramatically in recent decades, and support for sundry terrorists groups has grown apace. Hamas, Hesbollah, the PLO, Al-Qaeda and its subsets… they all have some presence here. Supporters for the Mujahadeen e-Khalk and the PKK have staged violent protests in Ottawa and raise money in Toronto.

This is a threat that will probably increase in coming years, especially as Islamic Fundamentalism is an ideological threat with a proven ability to attract people with non-Muslim backgrounds. It will also take years, even decades, before the

The IRA and its Protestant counterparts have some presence in Canada, although both groups tend to keep a low profile. There are some signs occasionally that Latin American groups have nosed into Canada, and certainly the narcotics the fuel them are very much present in the country. It is a point that is not generally appreciated in the modern world, but every point of heroin, or hit of crack represents ammunition in the magazine of some somebody’s AK-47.

Terrorism is sometimes referred to as Asymmetrical Warfare: On one side there are the authorities with all their resources, and no targets. On the other, is the terrorist, or guerrilla or organized criminal; with relatively fewer resources and an absolute abundance of targets.

A few apologists and sympathizers tend to see the terrorist as the underdog, as the valiant David against Goliath. However, the asymmetry of this conflict actually means that it is threatened society that is the underdog. In terms of theoretical power, the nation state has it all. But, all of the initiative and opportunity lies with the terrorist. He can use all of his power, when and where he decides to apply it. In terms of useable power the advantages all lie with the terrorist.

Terrorism in Canada? If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard it "can’t happen here", I never need to buy another lottery ticket. In 1981, an Armenian group bombed the Air Canada cargo facility at Los Angeles. The 1985 Air India and Narita bombings originated in Canada. And, of course, there is the continuous flow of narcotics and smuggled people through our airfields — activities that can fund terrorism.

Groups with a history of aviation terrorism are present in Canada and may someday operate against Canadian interests; or else they may operate inside Canada against the ticket counters, aircraft or airline offices of other nations.

It may be convenient to give a low risk assessment of terrorism against aviation targets in Canada, but this certainly does not mean the risk is non-existent.

John Thompson is President of the Mackenzie Institute which studies political instability and terrorism. He can be reached at: institute@mackenzieinstitute.com

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