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Latest on security screening & inappropriate urban development near Airports -

By Annabel Hepworth; via the Oz...

Airports plead for protection

Melbourne Airport chief executive Lyell Strambi. Picture: David Geraghty.

• Annabel Hepworth
  
• The Australian
  
• 12:00AM August 18, 2017
  

Governments have been urged to protect airports from constraints including “insensitive” residential projects under flight paths to avoid costing the economy in lost trade.

Warning that once airspace surrounding an airport is lost “it is gone forever”, the Australian Airports Association has warned a landmark government inquiry against housing developments that could spark complaints about aircraft noise and agriculture activities that could pose an aviation hazard by attracting birds.

In its submission to the inquiry into the national freight and supply chain networks, the group has also called on governments to support road and rail links to airports and access to facilities like freight centres.

The call was backed by Melbourne Airport boss Lyell Strambi, who cautioned that impediments on efficient airports were a drain that “just leads to economic constraint and higher cost”.

“There is a looming challenge,” Mr Strambi told The Australian.

People think about airfreight as “these great 747s with the gaping nose wide open and full of freight”, but most freight is carried in the belly of passenger aircraft.

“If we start to run into capacity constraints of any nature then it will effect both passengers and cargo,” he said.

Constraints on airports also undermined wider economic activity. “And also if the airport is constrained, airfares go up,” he said. “The same applies to cargo. If you can’t get it through to the places you need to get it to, people go elsewhere and ... prices go up.”

Mr Strambi is a former senior Qantas executive who became the chief executive of Australian ­Pacific Airports Corporation, which owns and operates Melbourne and Launceston airports.

He said Melbourne Airport was “a poster child” for what happened when the land use planning around airports was right and that “if you get it right your city has competitive advantage”.

The airport is planning a third runway and wants a rail link to Tullamarine.

The government’s infrastructure tsar, Infrastructure Australia, has lauded the planning for Melbourne Airport as spanning beyond 2050 and allowing for ground transport and protection of flight paths.

The Turnbull government has declared it wants to ease the cost of moving cargo.

The government’s “smart cities plan” states that urban developments around airports needed to be “carefully managed”, while IA has called for urgent action in the next five years to protect vital corridors including the Western Sydney Airport rail line.

The Australian Airports Association has warned the government that while deficiencies in ground infrastructure can be fixed, “once airspace surrounding an airport is lost it is gone forever and limits future airport growth”.

The group wants all states to adopt the national airports safeguarding framework in their state planning schemes and for the Turnbull government’s freight strategy to formally recognise the arrangements.

Under the framework, state and local governments are pushed to minimise noise-sensitive developments near airports.

“Insensitive residential developments under flight paths may lead to complaints about aircraft noise and eventually lead to the introduction of operational restrictions, curfews or even the closure of an airport,” the association says in its submission.

&..

Security expert’s call for more screening of freight at Australian airports

Joseph Wheeler, principal of aerospace law firm IALPG

• Annabel Hepworth
  
• The Australian
  
• 12:00AM August 18, 2017
  

Australia faces growing pressure to buttress screening for air cargo in the wake of the alleged terrorist plot to bring down a plane.

Adding to calls for a more stringent approach, Mike Carmody — the former chief of sec­urity at Federal Airports Corporation — said not everything that came into Australia was screened because of the sheer volume of air cargo crossing the border. He said there needed to be a “scalable mechanism” to increase the proportion of air cargo that was subject to screening, but he questioned whether this was based on the national terrorism threat level, saying the level “bears little relationship to aviation security”.

“Aviation security was a ­national crisis two weeks ago. What has happened?” Mr Carmody said.

He said that effective deterrence was based on the ongoing development of technologies for aviation security screening, but no matter how advanced the technology, the limitation was the screening operator.

Joseph Wheeler, principal of aerospace law firm IALPG, said more sophisticated screening technologies should be used “where it is practical to do so because it will enhance the safety outcome, no matter the cost”.

“More needs to be done to strengthen security procedures to prevent the use of cargo or freight in air transport for criminal ­activity and associated unlawful interference,” Mr Wheeler said.

Australia bans air cargo that has originated from or transited through a list of certain countries.

Mr Wheeler said “it is clearly time to reassess the list and potentially impose more broad-ranging screening of inbound cargo than presently applies given the unpredictability of where and when items being used for or intended for malicious purposes in Aus­tralia will arrive”

He also said the recent alleged plots in Australia should inspire international bodies to accelerate their sharing of sensitive intelligence information, noting that this was what happened after Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down over the eastern Ukraine three years ago.

Last night, a spokesman for the Department of Immigration and Border Protection pointed to comments on Wednesday by Malcolm Turnbull that Immigration and Border Protection Minister Peter Dutton was doing further work “on cargo, passenger security and screening at airports”.

Debate about aviation security has raged after the Australian Federal Police revealed military-grade explosives had allegedly been sent from Syria to operatives in Sydney via Turkey. A detailed proposal to clamp own on security at airports is reportedly due to go to cabinet

More troubles for our greatest walking, talking aviation disaster & minister Chester...

MTF...P2