Who should pay for increased airport security?
Welcome to my blog, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Travel Daily reports that the UK aviation industry can not afford the ever increasing costs of airport security. Security costs have risen by 150% since 9/11 terror attack in the US and now account for 25% of expenditure at airports. The industry is asking the UK Government to contribute to spiralling costs. The Government is adamant that the airports should cover all costs.
Photo by ARTS
If the Government steps in the money will have to come from taxation and I think it’s fairer that airport users should pay for the additional security rather than all taxpayers. Personally I’d rather pay a few pounds more to employ more staff and purchase the necessary equipment so I didn’t have to arrive at the airport hours before my flight departs and stand around in long queues. What do you think?
[tags]airport security[/tags]
July 20th, 2007 at 11:03 pm
What I’d be interested to know is how effective the security in airports is now compared to the clampdowns that were enforced from airports in Northern Ireland back in the 1970s.
Way back then, there wasn’t the option of fancy scanners that they have now nor, if memory serves, even the loop that the passengers walk through. As far as I can recall, this appeared to stop planes being used to transport explosives stone dead as I don’t recall any ever being detected.
I personally think that it should be the state that should pay through taxation. After all, 9/11 wasn’t something that merely affected airport passengers. It’s a problem for the nation rather than just the travellers as this particular incident makes very clear.
The other problem is that if it’s considered merely a problem for airports, and they beef up their security sufficiently to stop them being used as a means of attack, then the terrorists will simply move onto the next weakest link in the chain. That’s why I believe that it needs to be treated in a holistic manner which in turn dictates something controlled by the government and therefore presumably paid for by them.
Incidently, one interesting aspect of all my recent flights is that the luggage scales that I carry always gets the bag concerned pulled over by the security people. Surely I can’t be the only one planning to redistribute the weight and deny Ryanair et al their overweight charges?
July 21st, 2007 at 10:38 pm
Arnold, you make some very good points. Firstly that terrorism at airports can have wide reaching effects such as 9/11 and that the whole security issue needs to be tacked with an all round view, no point in strict security is some places and virtually none in others.
Would be interesting to know if security now with all mod cons if more effective than in Northern Ireland in the 1970s.
The luggage scales must be handy but how much do they weigh?