Lockerbie campaigner sounds alarm

Date: 20/02/1997

By Simon Coss

SAFETY campaigners are calling on the European Parliament to push for coordinated EU action on airline security, amid growing concern that checks on passenger luggage are inadequate.

European Commission officials admit that the vast majority of luggage checked in by airline passengers is still not being systematically screened for explosives at EU airports.

Only four Union airports - Manchester, Heathrow and Gatwick in the UK and Brussels international airport in Belgium - currently use the most up-to-date automatic explosives detection devices, with a further five on order for use in France.

All others in the EU still rely on the 'reconciliation' system, whereby every piece of hold luggage is matched to a travelling passenger.

This is causing concern among safety campaigners, who point out that it is now more than eight years since a terrorist bomb downed Pan-Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing everyone on board.

“Reconciliation is a good idea in theory, but it is not being carried out in practice. Bags are still being checked on to aircraft without accompanying passengers,” said Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter was a victim of the Flight 103 disaster.

To prove his point, Swire recently booked a flight from Ancona in Italy to Gatwick in the UK, changing aircraft in Rome. He boarded at Ancona with his luggage, but then failed to take the connecting flight after arriving in Rome. His luggage, however, travelled on to Gatwick without him.

“This is how it is thought the Lockerbie bomb was placed on Flight 103,” explained Swire, who is calling on all airline passengers to contact consumer organisations in their member states whenever they take a flight and their baggage ends up somewhere else.

“Every time this happens, it is a clear indication that the reconciliation process is failing,” he said.

But calls by Swire's pressure group 'UK Families - Flight 103' for MEPs to push for a coordinated Union response to the problem have so far only served to highlight how unlikely such a move is. The Commission insists it is powerless to act, stating in its evidence to the Parliament's petitions committee: “The Commission sympathises with the situation of 'UK Families - Flight 103'. However, it has no competence in most of the areas mentioned in the petition. ...Initiative for any action in these areas lies with the member states.”

Committee chairman, British Socialist MEP Eddie Newman, feels the issue is too important to get bogged down in inter-institutional wrangling. “What is needed is the political will from all sides to tackle this problem. We do not need to get hung up on how to do it institutionally,” he insisted.

The European Civil Aviation Conference (ECAC) which unites civil aviation authorities throughout the Union has called for airport security regimes across the EU to be harmonised by the year 2000. But this deadline is already being called into question and the organisation is understood to be considering delaying the move. In any case, ECAC's rules are in no way binding and the final decision on security measures still rests with member state authorities.