Safer Airports, the Israeli Way

The recent incident on Northwest Flight 253 has sent security heads of many a transportation authority, airport, and airline scrambling to come up with more thorough ways to scrutinise passengers, looking for potential terrorists. All of this is good and well, in principle. But reality shows that this will only turn airports - already a nightmare for travelers - into inefficient messes beyond our lowest expectations.

This needs not be so.

Ben-Gurion International Airport, in Israel, is probably more at risk of terrorist attacks than any other airport in the world. Yet, in the vast majority of cases, you can get from the door to the boarding lounge in just 30 minutes. This is not only for the convenience of the travelers - clusters of people at the counters are themselves ripe targets for terrorists.

Rafi Sela, the president of AR Challenges, a global transportation security consultancy, recently offered his opinion in an interview with the Toronto Star. His views and insights on the Israeli approach as compared to the measures being adopted in airports across the US, Canada, and Western Europe, are very interesting. The key? Don't look at luggage and X-rays. Look at people.

From personal experience I can say that security at Israeli airports is carried out professionally and efficiently. What's more, Israeli personnel are courteous and polite - the same can't be said of many cases in North America and Europe. I wouldn't call them perfect, no. On one occasion, I was at a smaller airport, taking an internal flight between Tel-Aviv and Eilat. Believe me, I could have strangled the girl that checked my papers. She was cute (very!) and polite, but inefficient and clearly out of her depth. Just my luck to get a rookie in training. But barring that small incident, all my other experiences in Israeli airports have been good. Security is thorough, but people are not delayed more than what's strictly necessary.

Hopefully order will emerge from chaos, just as it did in Israel. Otherwise, air travel will become a larger evil than it is now. A necessary evil, but one that need not be so.