It’s a big, bad world out there and traveling around it in a business aircraft doesn’t provide insulation from these dangers. Security experts gathering at the EBACE 2024 show are urging the industry to make sure it has a solid protection plan.
Airspace safety is increasingly compromised by armed conflict, or the threat of it, from Ukraine’s border with Russia through Israel, Iran, the Caucasus, and across Africa’s Sahel region. With this in mind, Osprey Flight Solutions has joined forces with the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) to hold the first World Overflight Risk Conference from July 2 to 4.
The agenda for the event in the Polish capital Warsaw features experts from leading airlines, police and security forces, NATO, the European Commission, and EASA, as well as risk management and insurance specialists. UK-based Osprey intends to publish a white paper to summarize the conference’s main conclusions.
The event is being run on a not-for-profit basis, with any profits to be donated to victims associations associated with the Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, which was shot down in July 2014 by Russian-affiliated forces in Ukraine, and Ukrainian International Airlines flight 752, which was destroyed by Iranian air defense missiles soon after takeoff from Tehran in January 2020.
Health and safety group MedAire sees airspace threats as part of a wider array of security concerns that have fueled a sense of "permacrisis" in which risks appear to constantly morph and escalate. In addition to airspace closures, a recent spate of spoofing incidents to undermine the integrity of GPS navigation systems—and rocket and drone attacks by Iranian proxy forces—are causing operational disruption.
“Charter operators and flight departments are having to reroute flights, and that means additional technical stops that have to be planned for. It means more money, time, and resources,” John Cauthen, security director of MedAire’s aviation and marine division, told AIN.
MedAire aims to help clients understand and contextualize the threats they face. “Our security teams try to bring the pieces of the puzzle together and then make risk-based decisions on the basis that everyone has a different appetite for risk,” Cauthen said.
To confront the threat of GPS signal spoofing, as has occurred in Middle East airspace recently, MedAire is providing training for flight crews. This provides guidance as to how pilots can ensure they are not being misled, and how they can fall back on training to make use of traditional charts and ground-based tools as backups.