The Civil Aviation Department (CAD) acting on behalf of the Guyana Government is ultimately responsible for international and domestic aviation security, former CAD director and aviation consultant Aubrey Alexander said in the wake of the hijacking of a Trans Guyana Airways 13-seat plane from Lethem to Brazil on Wednesday by four armed men.

Meanwhile, spokesman for the Ministry of Transport and Hydraulics, Ajay Baksh, has told Stabroek News that the issue of interior airstrip security was being addressed under the US$40 million Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)-funded air transport reform programme.

He said that CAD Director, Jeffrey Pierre, was still to hand in a report based on his investigations into the hijacking to Minister of Transport and Hydraulics, Tony Xavier. This report, he said, will be shared with the media.

Most of the passengers who were aboard the hijacked aircraft, said that prior to boarding they went through no security checks.

Alexander said that according to the Security Annexe of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) Convention, to which Guyana is a signatory, "each contracting state shall require the appropriate authority [in Guyana's case, the Civil Aviation Department] to define and allocate the tasks for implementation of the national and aviation security programme as between agencies of the state, airport administrations, operators and others concerned."

He quoted the Security Annexe as saying that "each contracting state shall require operators providing service from that state to adopt a security programme and to apply it in proportion to the threat to international civil aviation and its facilities as known to the state."

Further more, he said, the model clause on aviation security suggested by the ICAO made provision for possible inclusion in bilateral services agreements and sets out the responsibilities of aircraft with regard to aviation security provisions.

"Given the fact that a vast number of unlawful seizures of aircraft occurrences [hijacks] have transcended national borders," Alexander said, "the level of aviation security for flights from domestic aerodromes can't be very much lower that than as required for intended international flights."

The CAD, as a department of the Ministry of Transport and Hydraulics, is the government's regulatory body as pertains to aviation matters including aviation security at airports and landing strips. The CAD will have "to inform the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Commissioner of Police [about what is required]. It does not provide hands-on aviation security at the airport but is ultimately responsible for aviation security. This has been the case for the past 30, 40 years at the airport. The CAD does not have its own security services at the airport," he said. But he noted that it could contract security firms.

The CAD, he said, regulates and interacts with the ICAO with regard to standards and practices adopted for the conduct on international civil aviation. Guidelines for domestic aviation are based on those for international flights and take into account the number of hijackings that would have occurred.

The practicability of providing aviation security at the domestic level and the ability to determine the threat of unlawful acts to civil aviation (at the international level) were inextricably linked, he said.

And because of the frequency of hijackings in recent times, Alexander feels that aircraft owners must have an input in what must be done. It must be addressed as a matter of urgency, he said.

In 1996, a Roraima Airways aircraft was hijacked at Kwebanna in the Waini and later recovered in Colombia and earlier this year an Air Services Limited pilot was stabbed during the flight by a woman. (Miranda La Rose)