The three bomb blasts that ripped through Istanbul’s Ataturk airport Tuesday, killing 43 and injuring more than 200, has once again reignited a debate about airport security, and how attacks like the ones in Brussels, and now Turkey, can be prevented.
The short answer? They can’t.
“The unfortunate and simple fact is that it is impossible to stop every attack,” said Ben Vogel, the editor of IHS Jane’s Airport Review. There will always be individuals willing to blow themselves up, and if they cannot do that in a highly secured area, then they will get as close as they can.”
Despite robust security measures and armed guards at Ataturk, including screening at the terminal entrances, the three attackers still managed to inflict heavy casualties, quickly. By various accounts, the attack on Tuesday was coordinated enough in the sense that the attackers staggered their respective strikes as to kill and maim as many as possible.
Whether the attacks were meticulously pre-planned or improvised as they unfolded is yet to be known. Regardless, the attackers managed to grind the third busiest airport in Europe to a halt while threatening a tourism industry already under strain from previous terrorist attacks.
Going forward, Vogel said, airports and security agencies will have to “square the circle” of trying to keep terminals secure while retaining their accessibility.
In countries with active conflict zones, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, civilian airports usually follow a tiered model that involve vehicle screening at the front gate, passenger screening at a separate terminal, followed by airport-arranged transportation to the passenger terminal. While effective in cities, such as Irbil and Kabul, Vogel said this model “might not be wise” for cities with exponentially larger passenger volume.
“Airports can do only so much outside the terminal facilities to provide security without creating traffic mayhem and substantial delay,” Vogel said.
A model of airport security, often championed by pundits, is Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport, a fortress of a transportation hub that has concentric levels of security that involve a detailed questioning process and a profiling system that has drawn ire from civil-rights groups. Despite being located in a region wrought with strife, the last time Ben Gurion was subject to a terrorist attack was in 1972.
“Many people cite Israel as the example to follow,” Vogel said. “But we cannot simply assume that methods which work well in one airport can be equally as effective elsewhere.”
“It’s important to remember that airports differ in terms of their traffic mix, operational tempo and physical size – all these variables have an impact on how security is provided,” he added.
