By Raphael Satter
Associated Press
LONDON — Protesters stormed the tarmac at one of Britain’s busiest airports, shut down two airports in Thailand and invaded a runway in Athens - and some experts see a worrisome pattern.
In the post 9/11 era, protests at sensitive international airports have become an effective way to rattle nerves and publicize causes.
Philip Baum, editor of Aviation Security International, said there was an “increasing trend for demonstrators to shut down airports.”
Environmental action group Plane Stupid targeted Stansted Airport, northeast of London, in the most recent protest, cutting through its perimeter fence Monday and briefly knocking out Britain’s third-busiest airport.
Police said Tuesday they had charged 49 people with aggravated trespass - which, at worst, carries a three month sentence.
Last month, a massive group of Thai anti-government protesters invaded Bangkok’s two main airports, leaving more than 300,000 travelers stranded and paralyzed the nation’s tourism industry.
For the protesters, the airport siege ended in triumph: A Thai court last week ordered the dissolution of the ruling People’s Power Party for electoral fraud.
It was too early to tell whether the Thai protest would inspire others elsewhere, but, in Britain at least, activists vowed to keep up the pressure on the country’s airports.
The Stansted demonstrators - speaking to British media during the protests - said they had Heathrow, Europe’s biggest airport by passenger volume, in their sights.
One industry-watcher said that was no idle threat.
“This is not the last we’ll see of them,” said David Learmount, of industry journal Flight International.
He didn’t seen any direct danger from the early morning raid - the protesters were seen breaking in and held to a corner of the airport far from planes and the terminal - but said the media attention drawn by an airport incursion was hard to resist.
“There is a lot of drama at airports,” said Philip Butterworth-Hayes, the founding editor of Jane’s Airport Review, explaining that their visibility and vulnerability made them ideal places to push a political agenda.
In Greece, Olympic Airlines employees upset over plans to privatize the state-owned carrier repeatedly walked onto the runway at Athens International Airport earlier this year, disrupting flights.
Terrorists have long seen airports as a target of choice - underlined by the attempt to ram a blazing, fuel-laden car into the terminal at Glasgow Airport in Scotland last year.
More recently, climate change protesters have targeted the airline industry, which they claim contributes disproportionately to carbon emissions and global warming.
In September 2006 Plane Stupid activists blocked the runway at East Midlands Airport in central England for several hours; in October 2007 they handcuffed themselves to check-in desks in Manchester. Earlier this year five Greenpeace activists clambered onto a plane at Heathrow.
In Britain, stunts like a protest camp set up outside Heathrow in the summer of 2007 have helped push the issue of pollution from jets to the top of the government agenda, said Tim Johnson, director of the activist group Aviation Environment Federation.
He said it made sense for climate protesters to target airports because they were a big source of carbon emissions.
But he acknowledged that direct action like the one at Stansted - videos of which were posted online by Plane Stupid almost immediately - might inspire copycat tactics from other groups with different agendas. “It certainly puts the idea into people’s minds,” he said.
Protests undermine safety by distracting security workers from the more serious threat of terrorism and by forcing airlines to pour more money into perimeter defense, said Butterworth-Hayes. Tarmac incursions are particularly difficult to police because airports have huge surface areas.
“The amount of time and money you’d have to put into perimeter security is enormous,” he said. “Some airports are spending 40 percent of their entire budget on security, and that number is going to go up.”
Norman Shanks, a U.K.-based aviation security consultant, said airports would have to spend more money on expensive new technology like thermal imaging, low-light cameras, and better sensors to detect intruders.
The additional cost would “undoubtedly” be paid for by the traveling public, he said.
With consumers already pinching pennies, the extra costs would be bad news for the airline industry, which is already expected to face losses of $2.5 billion in 2009, according to the International Air Transport Association.
With Christmas around the corner, the possibility of a holiday attack may also on some people’s minds. But Butterworth-Hayes said environmental protesters, at least, would not be rash enough to try to brave the backlash from a holiday disruption.
“That’s where the publicity would be the greatest,” he said, “but it wouldn’t make any logical sense: It would turn too many people off.”