Hijacker Seizes EgyptAir Flight With Fake Suicide Belt
Airports Would Be More Successful if They “Profiled for Intent.”
It was not a terror attack, but that made it no less terrifying for the passengers. On March 29, they boarded EygptAir Flight 181 en route from the Eygptian coastal city of Alexandria to Cairo. Once passengers noticed they were headed off course over the Mediterranean Sea, it sank in…something was wrong.
A man claiming to be wearing an explosive vest had hijacked the plane and demanded it be redirected to Cyprus. Fortunately, no one was killed or injured, and the hijacker was arrested as soon as the plane touched down.
Now the question remains…how could he have gotten away with it so easily?
Highly alarmed about vulnerabilities in airport security, former Navy SEAL and FOX News contributor Robert O’Neill shared his views with anchor Martha MacCallum:
MacCallum: “It raises a lot of questions, but if a fake belt, if that’s what it was, can force an airline to land in a different location, we’re in a difficult situation.”
O’Neill: “It’s a very difficult situation. A similar thing happened on 9/11 when they obviously hijacked the planes with box cutters. They brought in clay that looked like suicide belts. This is part of the problem with the way that we’re screening. One of the issues that I’ve seen personally, especially flying internationally, is that the screeners are not looking for what’s not supposed to be there. They’re looking for water bottles. They’re looking for sunscreen. They’re looking for lotions over three ounces. We need to be profiling as far as criminal intent.”
MacCallum: “We’ve all had that frustration of watching stuff go down the belt and they’re looking for shampoo bottles, and we’ve seen in test cases where they’ve tried to test the system and they’re gotten through with guns and knives.”
O’Neill: “Over ninety percent of the time they get through with stuff they shouldn’t. The screeners…that’s another experiment. Who can we hire to put in the spot to get the job.”