Human Factors in Aviation

 Aviation Security: Hijacking

 

The morning of September 11^th of 2001 will live in infamy after 3000 people were killed due to a terrorist attack. A terrorist Islamic group hijacked 4 civil aircraft performing commercial operations and crashed two of them against the World Trade Center, one against the Pentagon and the last one did not reach its objective of destroying the white house. After these events, the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) was created to prevent a similar situation to occur (Burns, 2017).

Everybody knows that an aircraft hijack is the illegal seizure of an aircraft. To prevent hijacking or other terrorist attacks to occur, TSA has several layers of security. For example, when a passenger is booking a flight, TSA checks that the passenger is not a known criminal or a person who had had unruly behaviors on previous flights. That means that if you are an unruly passenger that endanger the lives of other people, you could be banned from flying again. In addition to that, the security personnel constantly check passengers’ behavior to identify suspicious persons that may hijack the plane.

TSA provides security sets and is really helpful to assure the security of the flight thanks to its well-trained workforce, however, criminals always manage to break these barriers. As technology evolves, criminal strategies also change to adapt to new security developments. (Smith, 2017) DHS has demonstrated in 2017 that a commercial aircraft can be perfectly hacked and controlled remotely. This implies a high risk of hijacking without actual hijackers inside the plane. Therefore, constant revision and evolution of the existing TSA security layers are necessary to achieve a secure operation.

References:

Burns, B. (2017, August 1). Inside look: TSA layers of security. Inside Look: TSA Layers of Security | Transportation Security Administration. Retrieved August 31, 2022, from https://www.tsa.gov/blog/2017/08/01/inside-look-tsa-layers-security

Smith, M. (2017, November 12). Homeland Security team remotely hacked a Boeing 757. CSO.                    Retrieved August 31, 2022, from https://www.csoonline.com/article/3236721/homeland-security-          team-remotely-hacked-a-boeing-757.html.