Pilots Blog

Terrorist threat and private aviation

Earlier this year there was considerable unease in the United States General Aviation (GA) community when the Department of Homeland Security announced that it was proposing to extend to private aviation many of the rules concerning security that currently applied to commercial aviation. If applied, GA and business aircraft owners would be submerged in a tortuous and expensive process, designed to combat the supposed threat dreamt up by a faceless bureaucrat in a darkened cellar, somewhere in Washington DC.

Not to be outdone the Brits could well be going the same route. I recently spent an evening with a pasty faced and mysterious individual who had emerged from a labyrinth inside Whitehall. He told me that something similar was planned for the UK - "terrorist threat, old boy - got to nip it in the bud".

The reality, of course, is that the terrorist threat from private aviation is miniscule but Governments on both sides of the Atlantic are not adverse to using a sledgehammer to crack a nut and GA, in the current climate, is an easy target.