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| EI - ETJ. The MetroJet Airbus A321 - 200 Aircraft that crashed over the Sinai Desert while operating as Flight 7K9268. Picture Credit: Al Arabiya English. |
All governments are essentially cut from the same cloth. If the governments of Egypt and Russia can help it, they will pass off the recent MetroJet plane crash in the Sinai Desert as having been caused by a technical fault rather than by an act of terrorism. Egypt's concern will be its image and tourism industry, while Russia will not want ISIS to claim to have the capability of striking back at Russia at a time and place of its choosing.
The French, British, German and Emirati governments are not taking any chances and have announced a ban on their flag carriers flying over the Sinai. There is an element of the Russia vs the West in the announcement of this precaution, but that element is not relevant to the subject of this post: the true condition of the air safety environment in this decade.
ISIS has claimed to have downed Flight 7K9268 using surface to air missiles but, this is not credible as ISIS does not have the missile systems to strike at aircraft at cruising altitudes. The danger to aircraft landing and taking off from North Africa is, however, very real as 20 000 Man Portable Air Defence Systems (MANPADS) were looted during NATO's toppling of Colonel Gaddafi in 2011. So, the full stock of the fallout from that NATO misadventure is yet to be taken.
What is credible, at this stage, is that a bomb may have been placed on the Sharm el-Sheikh to St Petersburg flight before take off. I worked on the airside for the airline for a considerable time and know for a fact that the one thing that protects passengers is not so much the security screening equipment, but the people who man those systems. If a greater section of the population is disaffected, as all those who supported the Muslim Brotherhood are, you install the best security equipment in vain as there are ways to bypass it. Further danger will come when non state actors get access to air defence systems more sophisticated than MANPADS.
The true condition of air safety, therefore, is that it is unravelling. What has largely caused this to happen is United States military adventurism and disregard for the cornerstone of international order that is non-intervention in the domestic affairs of sovereign states. United States actions have started, and will continue to create ungoverned spaces where non state actors will have missile systems capable of bringing down aircraft at previously unassailable heights. Of course, the transatlantic routes, the European airspaces and Asian airspaces will still be safe - for now.
