Sharm el-Sheikh Airport Security Lax, Or Simply Ignored?
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On Oct. 31, Metrojet Flight 9268 catastrophically broke apart over the Sinai Peninsula after taking off from Sharm el-Sheikh about 20 minutes earlier and reaching 31,000 feet. All 224 passengers died in the horrific crash, which U.S. and British officials say may have been caused by Islamic State terrorists.
Egyptian airport and security officials have launched an investigation into all staff at Sharm el-Sheikh airport who came into contact with the Russian plane. Officials have disclosed that they are checking the airport’s security camera footage for evidence of suspicious activity prior to the Metrojet flight.
But it may just be that it isn’t that security measures are ineffective, it is that they are being blatantly ignored.
There have been reports that security agencies received intelligence based on intercepted communications between Sinai militants, which pointed towards a bomb on the plane. They apparently suspect an explosive device could have been placed inside or on top of luggage by someone with access to the hold just before takeoff.
Two British tourists say that for only $30, they were allowed, and indeed, welcomed to bypass a security checkpoint and walk right onto a plane at the same Egyptian airport now under scrutiny in the crash of a Russian jetliner. Dale Parkyn and his wife, Joanne, told Sky News they were leaving the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh earlier this year when someone wearing a ballistics vest said they could skip a long baggage screening line for a small bribe.
“We’d seen all these personnel carriers and all these people from the army there, and a guy approached me, sort of slid up to the side of me,” Parkyn, 47, told Sky News. “He just said, ‘Would you like to avoid these queues?’’’ Parkyn said he paid the man, and immediately the couple’s suitcase was hustled past all the other waiting travelers At no point did my luggage go through any scanner,” Parkyn said. “At the time it was quite amusing. It was only after listening to the news [about the plane crash] that I realized the gravity of what potentially could have happened.”
Security at the airport is now under an international microscope, and British flights sent to retrieve thousands of stranded tourists on Friday banned checked luggage, saying it would have to undergo intensive screening before being loaded onto a followup cargo flight.
Aviation experts said a new international framework was needed to prevent airport security weaknesses being exploited by terrorists and that urgent changes were needed to upgrade security checks made on airport staff before they reached “airside”, as well as a thorough raising of the vetting and recruitment process of airport workers.
