ONE-STOP SECURITY NEEDED FOR GLOBAL AVIATION INDUSTRY

KUALA LUMPUR, March 5 (Bernama) -- The aviation industry should work towards
a more efficient and harmonised process of aviation security that can make life
easier for passengers, Cathay Pacific's chief executive Tony Tyler said
Thursday.

He said Cathay Pacific supported the move, led by the International Air
Transport Association (IATA) and the International Civil Aviation Organisation
(ICAO), to accelerate the harmonisation of security standards through one-stop
security.

"The airline industry has been trying to achieve this since 1997 but
progress has been painfully slow and sporadic," Tyler said at the International
Aviation Security Conference 2009 held in Hong Kong.

"That's why we support and endorse the call from IATA for ICAO and its
aviation security panel to provide the leadership to make one-stop security a
global reality," he said in a statement released here by Cathay Pacific.

Tyler said there was no suggestion that the industry should relax its guard
but "we have to make a greater effort to tackle some of the long-standing issues
that make the security process more difficult and more costly than it should
be".

He said he had lost count of the number of times customers have complained
to him about the ambiguities and lack of consistency they encountered in
security requirements in the world's airports.

"Some airports require you to take out your laptop, others don't; some make
you remove your shoes, others don't; some want you to take off your belt, others
don't," he added.

"What kind of message does that send to passengers? They are understandably
puzzled and frustrated and more than occasionally worried about these
inconsistencies."

Tyler said another example was the baffling array of policies covering metal
knives onboard aircraft and in the secure areas of airports.

"The bizarre array of rules currently in place serves only to confuse and
annoy passengers, create unnecessary costs for airlines and caterers and place
strain on security staff," he said.

Tyler said that "inconsistent and poorly conceived" rules bring the whole
security process into ridicule, while imposing unproductive cost onto the
airlines and frustrating all concerned and passengers in particular.

"There are solutions waiting out there to iron out all the anomalies. We
must find them and implement them," he said.
-- BERNAMA