Liquid bomb plot devastated British airline industry
Airlines operator BAA and British Airways report significant monthly losses on travel decline and heightened security costs; Ryanair to sue British government for reimbursement; can the airline industry afford to be so sensitive to threats?
The alleged British terrorists arrested last month in the liquid bombing plot may have failed in their mission, but the news had a damaging effect on the airline industry nevertheless. British airlines operator BAA said this week that heightened security coupled with a 5 percent drop off in passengers to cost the company £13 million in lost August revenue. As a mere operator, BAA may have gotten off lightly. British Airways, for its part, announced the disruption had cost it £40 million, and Ryanair said it planned to sue the British government for its own £3 million in losses.
We doubt such a lawsuit will succeed (the airline will donate any winnings to charity) but it is worth noting how sensitive the airline industry remains to short-term shocks. Every time airport security authorities identify a new threat, they rush in with ad-hoc screening procedures that have not been properly vetted for efficiency and speed. The result is utter chaos for everyone involved. Passengers are angry, screeners are harried for want of proper training and instruction, and the airline industry — which can hardly afford copier paper — suffers irredeemable losses. Politics is the main culprit here. Planners are under intense pressure to respond to the latest threat, as if the fact that the liquid bombers were caught on a certain day means that a similar plot is likely to occur the next. Of course, this is not at all true. Terrorism is a serious threat, but these days we seem to be mainly terrorizing ourselves.
-read more in this Agence France-Presse report
