Airport security refers to the techniques and methods used in protecting passengers, staff and aircraft which use the airports from accidental/malicious harm, crime and other threats.
Large numbers of people pass
through airports every day. This presents potential targets for terrorism and
other forms of crime because of the number of people located in a particular
location. Similarly, the high
concentration of people on large airliners, the potential high death rate with
attacks on aircraft, and the ability to use a hijacked airplane as a lethal
weapon may provide an alluring target for terrorism, whether or not they
succeed due their high profile nature following the various attacks and
attempts around the globe in recent years.
Airport security attempts to
prevent any threats or potentially dangerous situations from arising or
entering the country. If airport security does succeed in this, then the
chances of any dangerous situations, illegal items or threats entering into
both aircraft, country or airport are greatly reduced. As such, airport security
serves several purposes: To protect the airport and country from any
threatening events, to reassure the traveling public that they are safe and to
protect the country and their people.
Monte R. Belger of the U.S.
Federal Aviation Administration notes "The goal of aviation security is to
prevent harm to aircraft, passengers, and crew, as well as support national
security and counter-terrorism policy."
The
International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), is a specialized agency of
the United Nations. It codifies the principles and techniques of international
air navigation and fosters the planning and development of international air
transport to ensure safe and orderly growth. Its headquarters are located in
the Quartier International of Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
The
ICAO Council adopts standards and recommended practices concerning air
navigation, its infrastructure, flight inspection, prevention of unlawful
interference, and facilitation of border-crossing procedures for international
civil aviation. ICAO defines the protocols for air accident investigation
followed by transport safety authorities in countries signatory to the
Convention on International Civil Aviation (Chicago Convention).
The
Air Navigation Commission (ANC) is the technical body within ICAO. The
Commission is composed of 19 Commissioners, nominated by the ICAO's contracting
states, and appointed by the ICAO Council. Commissioners serve as independent
experts, who although nominated by their states, do not serve as state or
political representatives. The development of Aviation Standards and
Recommended Practices is done under the direction of the ANC through the formal
process of ICAO Panels. Once approved by the Commission, standards are sent to
the Council, the political body of ICAO, for consultation and coordination with
the Member States before final adoption.
ICAO
should not be confused with the International Air Transport Association (IATA),
a trade association representing a small proportion of the world’s airlines,
(240 members), also headquartered in Montreal, or with the Civil Air Navigation
Services Organisation (CANSO), an organization for Air Navigation Service
Providers (ANSPs) with its headquarters at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol in the
Netherlands. These are trade associations representing specific aviation
interests, whereas ICAO is a body of the United Nations.
History
The
forerunner to ICAO was the International Commission for Air Navigation (ICAN).
It held its first convention in 1903 in Berlin, Germany but no agreements were
reached among the eight countries that attended. At the second convention in
1906, also held in Berlin, 27 countries attended. The third convention, held in
London in 1912 allocated the first radio callsigns for use by aircraft. ICAN
continued to operate until 1945.
Fifty-two
countries signed the Convention on International Civil Aviation, also known as
the Chicago Convention, in Chicago, Illinois, on 7 December 1944. Under its
terms, a Provisional International Civil Aviation Organization (PICAO) was to
be established, to be replaced in turn by a permanent organization when 26
countries ratified the convention. Accordingly, PICAO began operating on 6 June
1945, replacing ICAN. The 26th country ratified the Convention on 5 March 1947
and, consequently PICAO was disestablished on 4 April 1947 and replaced by
ICAO, which began operations the same day. In October 1947, ICAO became an
agency of the United Nations linked to the United Nations Economic and Social
Council (ECOSOC).
2013 proposal to relocate
headquarters to Qatar
In
April 2013, the state of Qatar offered to serve as the new permanent seat of the
Organization starting in 2016. The offer must be considered by all of ICAO's
191 Member States at the next convening of the triennial ICAO Assembly, which
will take place from 24 September through 4 October 2013. A minimum of
three-fifths (60%) of ICAO's Member States must agree to the Qatar proposal for
it to be approved. According to ICAO spokesman Anthony Philbin, there has never
been an official request to move the ICAO since its creation. Qatar, which has
promised to construct a massive new headquarters for the ICAO and cover all
moving expenses, has stated that Montreal "was too far from Europe and
Asia", "had cold winters," was hard to attend due to the refusal
of the Canadian government to provide visas in a timely manner, and that the
taxes imposed on the ICAO by Canada are too high.
According
to the Globe and Mail, the move to relocate the ICAO is at least partly
motivated by the Pro-Israel foreign policy of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen
Harper. Citing anonymous sources, the Globe and Mail reported that Arab
ambassadors to the United Nations met in April 2013 in New York, where, among
other things, they "devoted a section of their agenda to countering
Canada, including mustering allies from other countries to vote against Ottawa
in international organizations." It was also reported that "Some Arab
countries are eyeing moves to back [Qatar] by campaigning to win the votes of
other states." The Globe commented that "Arab nations already looking
to deal a blow to Ottawa for its stand on Palestinian issues could wield
influence if they united behind the ICAO campaign" and that "Losing
ICAO's Montreal headquarters would be more than the diplomatic embarrassment
the Harper Conservatives."
France,
Britain and the United States announced that they opposed moving the
organization.
Approximately
one month later, Qatar withdrew its bid to move ICAO headquarters, meaning that
the organization will remain in Montreal. Reportedly, Qatar's withdrawal came
after a separate proposal to the ICAO's governing council to move the ICAO
triennial conference to Doha was defeated by a vote of 22–14. According to
French delegate Michel Wachenheim, "This conference of the general
assembly was to be held in Montreal, as it always is … and twenty-two of the 36
said no, they thought that moving it (to Doha) four months before a general
assembly was far too complicated." Wachenheim also stated that, "at
our meeting this (Friday) morning, we learned that Qatar had withdrawn its
offer (to move the HQ)."
Statute
The
9th edition of the Convention on International Civil Aviation includes
modifications from 1948 up to year 2006. ICAO refers to its current edition of
the Convention as the Statute, and designates it as ICAO Doc 7300/9. The
Convention has 19 Annexes that are listed by title in the article Convention on
International Civil Aviation.
Membership
As
of November 2011, there are 191 ICAO members, consisting of 190 of the 193 UN
members (all but Dominica, Liechtenstein, and Tuvalu), plus the Cook Islands.
Liechtenstein
has delegated Switzerland to implement the treaty to make it applicable in the
territory of Liechtenstein.
Governing Council
The
Governing Council is elected every 3 years and consists of 36 members divided
into 3 categories. The present Council was elected on October 1, 2013 at the
38th Assembly of ICAO at Montreal. The Structure of present Council is as
follows:
§ PART I – (States of chief importance in air transport) – Australia,
Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russian Federation,
United Kingdom and the United States. All of them have been re-elected.
§ PART II – (States which make the largest contribution to the provision
of facilities for international civil air navigation) – Argentina, Egypt,
India, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South
Africa, Spain and Venezuela. Except Norway, Portugal and Venezuela, all others
have been re-elected.
§ PART III– (States ensuring geographic representation)- Bolivia, Burkina
Faso, Cameroon, Chile, Dominican Republic, Kenya, Libya, Malaysia, Nicaragua,
Poland, Republic of Korea, United Arab Emirates and United Republic of
Tanzania. Bolivia, Chile, Dominican Republic, Kenya, Libya, Nicaragua, Poland
and United Republic of Tanzania have been elected for the first time.
Standards
ICAO
also standardizes certain functions for use in the airline industry, such as
the Aeronautical Message Handling System (AMHS). This makes it a standards
organization.
Each
country should have an accessible Aeronautical Information Publication (AIP),
based on standards defined by ICAO, containing information essential to air
navigation. Countries are required to update their AIP manuals every 28 days
and so provide definitive regulations, procedures and information for each
country about airspace and aerodromes. ICAO's standards also dictate that
temporary hazards to aircraft are regularly published using NOTAMs.
ICAO
defines an International Standard Atmosphere (also known as ICAO Standard
Atmosphere), a model of the standard variation of pressure, temperature, density,
and viscosity with altitude in the Earth's atmosphere. This is useful in
calibrating instruments and designing aircraft.
ICAO
standardizes machine-readable passports worldwide. Such passports have an area
where some of the information otherwise written in textual form is written as
strings of alphanumeric characters, printed in a manner suitable for optical
character recognition. This enables border controllers and other law
enforcement agents to process such passports quickly, without having to input
the information manually into a computer. ICAO publishes Doc 9303 Machine
Readable Travel Documents, the technical standard for machine-readable
passports. A more recent standard is for biometric passports. These contain
biometrics to authenticate the identity of travellers. The passport's critical
information is stored on a tiny RFID computer chip, much like information
stored on smartcards. Like some smartcards, the passport book design calls for
an embedded contactless chip that is able to hold digital signature data to
ensure the integrity of the passport and the biometric data.
ICAO
is active in infrastructure management, including Communication, Navigation,
Surveillance / Air Traffic Management (CNS/ATM) systems, which employ digital
technologies (like satellite systems with various levels of automation) in
order to maintain a seamless global air traffic management system.
Registered codes
Both
ICAO and IATA have their own airport and airline code systems. ICAO uses
4-letter airport codes (vs. IATA's 3-letter codes). The ICAO code is based on
the region and country of the airport—for example, Charles de Gaulle Airport
has an ICAO code of LFPG, where L indicates Southern Europe, F, France, PG,
Paris de Gaulle, while Orly Airport has the code LFPO (the 3rd letter sometimes
refers to the particular flight information region (FIR) or the last two may be
arbitrary). In most of the world, ICAO and IATA codes are unrelated; for
example, Charles de Gaulle Airport has an IATA code of CDG and Orly, ORY.
However, the location prefix for continental United States is K and ICAO codes
are usually the IATA code with this prefix. For example, the ICAO code for Los
Angeles International Airport is KLAX. Canada follows a similar pattern, where
a prefix of C is usually added to an IATA code to create the ICAO code. For
example, Edmonton International Airport is YEG or CYEG. (In contrast, airports
in Hawaii are in the Pacific region and so have ICAO codes that start with PH;
Kona International Airport's code is PHKO.) Note that not all airports are
assigned codes in both systems; for example, airports that do not have airline
service do not need an IATA code.
ICAO
also assigns 3-letter airline codes (versus the more-familiar 2-letter IATA
codes—for example, UAL vs. UA for United Airlines). ICAO also provides
telephony designators to aircraft operators worldwide, a one- or two-word
designator used on the radio, usually, but not always, similar to the aircraft
operator name. For example, the identifier for Japan Airlines International is
JAL and the designator is Japan Air, but Aer Lingus is EIN and Shamrock. Thus,
a Japan Airlines flight numbered 111 would be written as "JAL111" and
pronounced "Japan Air One One One" on the radio, while a similarly
numbered Aer Lingus would be written as "EIN111" and pronounced
"Shamrock One One One".
ICAO
maintains the standards for aircraft registration ("tail numbers"),
including the alphanumeric codes that identify the country of registration. For
example, airplanes registered in the United States have tail numbers starting
with N.
ICAO
is also responsible for issuing alphanumeric aircraft type codes containing two
to four characters. These codes provide the identification that is typically
used in flight plans. The Boeing 747 would use B741, B742, B743, etc.,
depending on the particular variant.
Regions and regional offices
ICAO
has a headquarters and seven regional offices:
§ Headquarters – Montreal, Quebec, Canada
§ Asia and Pacific (APAC) – Bangkok, Thailand
§ Eastern and Southern African (ESAF) – Nairobi, Kenya
§ Europe and North Atlantic (EUR/NAT) – Paris, France
§ Middle East (MID) – Cairo, Egypt
§ North American, Central American and Caribbean (NACC) – Mexico City,
Mexico
§ South American (SAM) – Lima, Peru
§ Western and Central African (WACAF) – Dakar, Sénégal
ICAO and climate change
Emissions
from domestic aviation are included within the Kyoto targets agreed by
countries. This has led to some national policies such as fuel and emission
taxes for domestic air travel in the Netherlands and Norway, respectively.
Although some countries tax the fuel used by domestic aviation, there is no
duty on kerosene used on international flights.
ICAO
is currently opposed to the inclusion of aviation in the European Union
Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS). The EU, however, is pressing ahead with its
plans to include aviation.
Annex |
Description |
Agency Responsible |
ANNEX 01
|
Personnel Licensing
|
CASA
|
ANNEX 02
|
Rules of the Air
|
CASA
|
ANNEX 03
|
Meteorological Service
for International Air Navigation
|
Airservices
|
ANNEX 04
|
Aeronautical Charts
|
Airservices
|
ANNEX 05
|
Units of Measurement to
be used in Air and Ground Operations
|
Airservices
|
ANNEX 06
|
Operations Of Aircraft
|
CASA
|
ANNEX 07
|
Aircraft Nationality
and Registration Marks
|
CASA
|
ANNEX 08
|
Airworthiness Of Aircraft
|
CASA
|
ANNEX 09
|
Facilitation
|
Infrastructure
|
ANNEX 10
|
Aeronautical Telecommunications
|
Airservices/CASA
|
ANNEX 11
|
Air Traffic Services
|
Airservices/CASA
|
ANNEX 12
|
Search and Rescue
|
Infrastructure
|
ANNEX 13
|
Aircraft Accident Investigation
|
Infrastructure
|
ANNEX 14
|
Aerodromes
|
CASA
|
ANNEX 15
|
Aeronautical Information Services
|
Airservices
|
ANNEX 16
|
Environment Protection
|
Infrastructure
|
ANNEX 17
|
Aviation Security
|
Infrastructure
|
ANNEX 18
|
The Safe Transport of
Dangerous Goods by Air
|
CASA
|
ANNEX 19
|
Safety Management
|
CASA
|