AIR WATCH


25 JULY: NORTH KIVU PROVINCE, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO Officials from the Democratic Republic of Congo claimed that rebels from neighbouring Rwanda took an Indian pilot, Syed Mazher, aged 25, hostage when they attacked his plane after he landed at Walikale airstrip. Goma Express, the airline company whose aircraft was attacked, said a Russian pilot escaped and flew the plane back to Goma, the provincial capital 150km away, with a wounded Congolese national on board. Mazher (pic) was released on 1 August.


6 JUNE: VIENNA A 20-year old Romanian stowaway managed to get under the perimeter fence at Vienna airport and then climb into the wheel well of a private B-747 belonging to a sheikh from the UAE. The man then survived a 97-minute flight to Heathrow while clinging to the retracted undercarriage of the aircraft. The stowaway may have survived as the aircraft flew lower than normal due to bad weather.


15 JUNE: QUEENSTOWN, NEW ZEALAND Two pilots, working for a scenic air service, were served trespass notices and banned from all airport land for two years for having used their airside security passes to sneak onto Queenstown Airport runway in the middle of the night of 9 May to race a car.


26 JULY: CARUARU, BRAZIL An armed gang used a pickup truck to crash through security controls at Caruaru Airport and then drove onto the manoeuvring area where they crashed into the wing of an air taxi which was preparing for departure. The gang fired a number of warning shots before forcing the crew to hand over an unspecified quantity of money and documents being carried on behalf of the country's federation of banks.


26 JULY: EAST LONDON, SOUTH AFRICA A security officer who was delivering foreign exchange money to the airport was confronted by a gunman who demanded the money and fled the airport in a Toyota Corolla with two other men.


INCIDENTS


2 JUNE: LONDON Reports emerged that a cover story in LHR News (a British Airways staff magazine) about a new service allowing passengers to download paperless boarding passes to their iPhones included a close-up cover photo of a white boarding pass emblazoned with the name Bin Laden/Osama, seated in 7C. BA acknowledged that the magazine graphic was a mistake.


24 JUNE: AUCKLAND Parts of Auckland Airport were evacuated after a suspicious package was discovered at a Jetstar ticket counter. Some reports indicate that the package contained a number of inert explosive training devices which had been mislaid by a security trainer.


25 JUNE: RIO DE JANEIRO Michael D. Slynn, 49, a United Airlines pilot was briefly detained after lowering his trousers during security screening. He was allowed to fly back to Washington, D.C., after signing a document promising to appear before a judge the next time he is in Brazil.


August 2010 Aviationsecurityinternational


2 JULY: MUNICH Parts of Munich Airport were cordoned off after German baggage scanners spotted what appeared to be a suicide-bomber's belt in an X-ray image. The item was actually a belt with a novelty buckle in the shape of a hand grenade.


7 JULY: NEW YORK A bag containing four Glock handguns, belonging to protection officers travelling with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was mistakenly put on an American Airlines flight from New York to Los Angeles, rather than to Washington DC. By the time the luggage was located, the guns had disappeared and are presumed to have been stolen.


www.asi-mag.com 5


19 JUNE: PAKISTAN Mohammad Ali Hamadeh, one of the hijackers of TWA 847 in 1985 (famously seen hooded in the door of the aircraft), was killed in a U.S. drone attack on an alleged al-Qaeda hideout in Pakistan's North Waziristan.


26 JUNE: HANGZHOU A Xiamen Airlines flight en route from Hangzhou to Nanning returned to Hangzhou when the crew noticed the cabin pressure was rapidly decreasing. The crew later found that an over- wing exit was open and the passenger seated next to it told the crew that he had tried to open the door in case there was a real emergency and had pulled the handle.


28 JUNE: RUSSIA Reports emerge that the advertising campaigns of two Russian carriers have further enhanced the image of the flight attendant as a sex object which, in turn, could lead to inflight disruptive behaviour. Start- up airline Avianova’s marketing video shows women stripping out of their stewardess uniforms and washing the company’s planes. Meanwhile Aeroflot is reported to have prepared a 2011 calendar where each page has one of the airline's female flight attendants in naked poses.


19 JUNE: MILTON, MASSACHUSETTES John Ferruggio, the In-flight Director of the Pan Am flight hijacked to Cairo in September 1970 died aged 84.


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