Technology to detect bombs 'isn't there'

: Latest News; Friday, 05 November 2010

The costs to the aviation industry of screening every single piece of airfreight may be too high for governments, airlines and shippers, an expert says.

"In a worst case, it would stop world trade," said James Halstead of Aviation Economics.

"UPS and FedEx would probably go bust and we'd have a full disaster scenario. The cost of the extra effort involved in putting in security checks to find the sorts of bombs (uncovered last week in air cargo carriers UPS' and FedEx's planes) would be almost too much to consider."

He also said the sophisticated technology used by terrorist groups was a leap-frog scenario. Even using the best-possible scanning technology with billions of dollars invested, terrorists might simply start using some other method.

"They do as much checking as they can in many places, but it's the danger of small items that is the problem," he said.

It is estimated more than half of the cargo flown into the United States comes via passenger planes, making cargo bombs a tempting way for terror groups to attack civilian passengers.

Some new scanning systems can pick up traces of chemical explosives, but the costs are high.

Swabbing packages individually for explosives is not a practical option for the millions of packages flown on planes every day, Halstead said.