FACILITATION AND SECURITY IN AIR TRANSPORT

There is no other sector of the global economy so precariously poised on the swaying regulatory tightrope between facilitation and security as air transport.

The industry has grown through systematic facilitation, based on high safety standards, massive investment in automation and other information technologies, and carefully nurtured consultative mechanisms with Customs and other official control agencies at international, regional, national and airport levels.

Security has brought airport delays and discomforts for air passengers, local collapses in tourist traffic, frequent losses in earnings, customer good will and confidence from cancelled or delayed flights, the blunting of high-performance, innovative cutting-edge performance in origin-destination cargo delivery times and a mounting array of associated commercially unproductive compliance costs.

Civil aviation authorities are at the centre of government strategies for both security and facilitation, so TIACA felt it might be timely and useful to offer some observations that could assist contacts and consultations between ECAC Facilitation and Security Working Groups to focus joint policies and activities.

Over the last fifty years, and in the wake of its initial appearance in the Chicago Convention, �facilitation� has acquired a new and special connotation through a systematic extension into international trade practice and regulation.

The UN Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) has secured wide acceptance that international trade facilitation can be defined as �the simplification and harmonisation of international trade procedures and the information flows associated with them�.

It is important to note, however, that there are frequent occasions on which the apparently synonymous phrase �facilitation of international trade� takes in much wider concepts of market access, development of physical transport infrastructure and even commercial training and education.

It is assumed that ECAC will find it most convenient and prudent to adopt the constraints of the ECE definition, which in practice, offer the Facilitation Working Group a very substantial and demanding set of activities and responsibilities.

While civil aviation has moved to define �security�, and such associated concepts as �security equipment�, for its own modal purposes, there are no accepted or even formally proposed international definitions of �security� in its widest sense and one of the many consequences is a pervading ambiguity and potential confusion in many current debates and discussions.

Even in air transport, against the background of a long history of hi-jacking and sabotage associated with passenger operations, �security�, for many aviation operators and regulators, had become equated with the supervision and surveillance of luggage inspection and passenger interrogation at airport reception counters.

In cargo operations, for many years, there was relatively little security activity outside and beyond the very high standards of commercial security inherent in handling very high value consignments and the special precautions essential for handling dangerous or hazardous goods in the particularly sensitive context of airborne movement.

The Lockerbie disaster gave considerable extension and refinement to cargo security practice, especially in relation to the emergence of �known shipper� categorisation and procedures.

In these new circumstances it might be useful for ECAC to consider adopting some such definition of cargo security as "A set of procedures and practices designed to prevent the introduction of illicit items into an international trade consignment or unauthorised access to and manipulation of controlling information systems".

This is, at any rate, the sort of conceptual profile that has emerged from the many debates and documents associated with the work of the World Customs Security and Facilitation Task Force over the last two years. It will be difficult to carry on a coherent dialogue between the Facilitation and Security Working Groups without early agreement on the nature of their mutual concern, so, even if this approach seems unsatisfactory, it would seem essential to arrive at some other, acceptable, definition in respect of cargo operations.

It is often said, but less and less believed, that facilitation and security are just two sides of the same coin. Independently of any reference to current realities, it has to be remembered that both sides of a coin are never seen simultaneously. If present regulatory practice is taken into account, the international trading and transport community is very conscious that every time this particular coin is tossed to decide a procedural issue it always falls with the security side uppermost.

It would be more constructive to look to a less simplistic analytical approach as a possible starting point for ECAC security /facilitation consultation.

Legitimate doubt. This would cover situations in which it is self evident that security is calling for actions or rules that are intrinsically counter-facilitative.

In such circumstances the main task for the facilitation lobby is to define and assess the scope and significance of the associated incompatibility and seek some second regulatory thoughts.

Making the best of a bad facilitation job. This is often likely to prove an exercise in damage limitation in co-operating with the inevitable. It will cover a good deal of the ground now open to a range of security /facilitation debates.

It is probably the most urgent and important area of negotiation and possible regulatory amendment. Much good can be done by reasoned and well-supported argument.

Hitching a facilitation ride on the security bandwagon. Many important facilitation objectives have been frustrated by lack of political will or even interest. They can, in theory, at least, be attached to and carried along by certain security initiatives and concepts now enjoying widespread governmental and inter-governmental attention.

TIACA suggests that ECAC might find it useful to adopt these, or some other prudent elements of examination and assessment, in organising and guiding co-operation between Facilitation and Security Working Groups, in preference to any optimistic assumption that there is some natural, easily sustained symbiosis between these two activities.

Before entering into any detailed analysis of the facilitation/security scene in respect of air cargo it may be desirable to make some reference to parallel issues in passenger traffic, bearing in mind the most important distinction that airlines can only deal with passenger information in respect of airport-airport transport.

There is no possibility of bringing passenger traffic within the secure origin-destination supply chain philosophies and regimes now coming into view in cargo security thinking. These are influencing the cargo industry and such related interests/institutions as ECAC, ICAO, IATA, IECC and TIACA, to take account of other elements and actors � for example, road carriers - at other points in the overall cargo movement.

Apart from very minor and specialised passenger multimodalities � for example the use of Thalys rail system connections and ticketing to move passengers from Brussels for onward movement by air from Paris � the passenger only enters the air carrier�s system � and so responsibilities - at the embarkation airport.

A further difference is that cargo, even of the most threatening nature, does not manage its own operations. There has to be someone, notionally subject to relevant security measures, in the background.

A proper appreciation of this factor may, eventually, have useful effects in diverting some of the possibly disproportionate attention, currently paid to cargo by leading security agencies, towards improved surveillance of individuals.

The remainder of this paper lists some of the practical security/facilitation interfaces and interactions that have emerged from regulatory changes and new proposals since September 11, 2001 and are likely to figure on any joint ECAC Facilitation/Security Agenda.

Civil aviation can only support and applaud all moves to introduce and apply standardised data items for use in global trade and transport operations and related official controls.

As the original G7 work on Customs data standards moved forward there was a very constructive parallel move, in the World Customs Organisation (WCO), to respond to the explosive growth of airborne express consignments by procedures for immediate release based on advance submission, by fully compliant traders/carriers, of prescribed control data, categorised according to levels of duty and tax liability (CCC Express Release Guidelines, later revised as WCO Immediate Release Guidelines).

Individual Customs services were left to make their own choice of those data that they considered essential for their own control purposes.

Trade interests, led by IATA, secured a second review, beginning in 2001, to examine the possibility of obtaining general agreement to reduced categorised control data lists that would reflect the pared-down information requirements of more advanced Customs administrations. Even in the very favourable facilitation atmosphere for discussion on these lines, prior to 11 September, this proved very difficult, and final negotiations ran headlong into the initial onslaughts of anti-terrorist strategy and unforeseen, extra, complications of intensified data demands from countries especially concerned for phyto-sanitary standards.

In these circumstances it was agreed that that the Guidelines should be left in their original form where they could still provide discerning Customs with very useful facilitation opportunities.

Much the same issues have been posed, though in a more urgent and universal form, during debates in the WCO Security and Facilitation Task, where undeniably constructive WCO work on data standardisation, in agreed succession to the G7 activity, has slid imperceptibly and dangerously towards suggested standard sets of required data.

The WCO Council which had, in 2002, called on the Task Force to define a list of data needed for the new and heightened demands of risk-assessment for security purposes have since (June 2003) approved a comprehensive set of 27 items.

Here, too, while formal presentation and agreement are based on the concept of a maximum requirement, there is a constant danger that this will be seen as a norm, and then used as a basis for future gradual enlargement, just as the early simplicity of the 6-digit WCO Harmonised Descriptor System has, in the hands of some individual Customs authorities, grown to as many as 19.

Meanwhile, it is essential that, in this much wider context of global security practice, the trade and transport community urges and supports the principle of the Immediate Release Guidelines compromise in the form of a list of data items, accepted by administrations as the maximum required in all circumstances.

This should be backed by sustained efforts in the WCO and in member states, to persuade individual Customs services to adopt and apply such lesser number, below the 27 maximum, as they might find sufficient for their own control purposes.

It will be important to explain the ways in which the Authorised Trader principle, now included in the revised Kyoto Convention, can be incorporated and applied in automated risk-assessment systems to offer simplified procedures � including minimal data requirements - to fully compliant and reliable traders.

This is all the more desirable because this principle of authorisation is now being examined by US and other control agencies in considering how they may apply their security data requirements to other participants in the international supply chain, including, of course, air carriers and other transport providers.

It has been invoked, if not applied, in terms of imposed delays that could be completely incompatible with some major air transport activities.

It has acquired a degree of official impetus and acceptance that make some of its features unavoidable in virtually all air cargo operations.

Outright security/facilitation incompatibility is self-evident in requirements to delay the loading of cargo for twelve hours in systems where consignments only arrive in the movement system, for overnight-inter-continental delivery, with four or five hours notice.

The ordinary control needs of Customs to cope with large volumes of nil or low value consignments arriving at a growing number of airports placed an obvious �peace time� administrative premium on additional time to select and target suspect items.

This was abundantly true in the context of illicit drug traffic and set an obvious and persuasive precedent for anti-terrorist security, which is intensified by an understandable concern to exercise control in such a way that the physical arrival of acutely dangerous consignments in the country of import can be avoided by rejection at or before loading for export.

There is therefore a legitimate and unavoidable need for consultation and negotiation to establish a reasonable balance between security and operational necessities, given the special rapidity/reliability needs of air cargo and the special elements of inherent commercial and flight security already characteristic of international air transport.

The successful application of the broad principles of these Guidelines, by a number of major Customs services, to the very large numbers � but relatively small tonnage - of international consignments carried by express operators, might offer some potential advantages through progressive extension to other parts of the air cargo industry and to other transport sectors.

It was obvious, however that progress towards a situation in which all traders and carriers had high-performance automated systems and integrated end-to-end management of the consignment would be very gradual and that the required shift of data generation and submission, backwards from import into a point at or before export, would set substantial limits to the speed of facilitation progress.

Traders and carriers now face an entirely and very disturbing situation in which powerful political will is being exercised, to much more than national effect, to rush all these normally gradual changes into a hasty and, at points, quite impracticable adjustment of commercial practice and official capabilities. Changes that would have taken decades are being packed into months, and the resulting frictions are producing an ironic scenario in which facilitation is being throttled by over-enthusiastic, precipitate, enforcement of some of its most promising principles.

At a very early point in WCO development of the UCR concept there was another possibility that air transport facilitation would fall on a security sword.

The concept of unique identification of every international consignment is a legitimate facilitation objective/tool in its own right, as attested by commercial and official use over the many years during which it has been applied by air transport through uniquely numbered air waybills.

At the outset of WCO discussions, partly because of a long history in the UN Economic Commission for Europe Facilitation Working Party (WP.4.), there was considerable support, among Customs delegates, for a universal, standard, that, in theory, at least, could have taken precedence over, and either displaced or become a compulsory addition to, the air waybill system.

This has gradually changed, first to a broad and now well-rooted agreement that the air transport industry was already meeting all reasonable UCR requirements and then to a shift away from support for a central standard, elsewhere, to dependence on UCR solutions already in commercial use on a scale and in a form acceptable to Customs.

It is by no means certain that this more recent shift to flexibility will gain formal WCO acceptance or that it is necessarily the most satisfactory long-term facilitation formula.

While the air transport industry will, quite rightly, maintain support for its own, existing, UCR air waybill practices, it may, with an eye to multimodal realities, have some serious doubts about the practicality of a shifting set of differing UCR regimes as a feasible facilitation alternative to some single international solution with similar weight and utilisation to the uniquely numbered air waybills.

This item on the WCO Task Force agenda has stimulated a good deal of speculation, but produced very little reliable information on the intended form of the eventual outcome.

The position is clouded by the intrusion into what, in theory, might be considered as a broad international concept, of a number of substantive US arrangements, notably the Customs Trade Partnership for Anti-Terrorism (C-TPAT) and the Container Security Initiative (CSI) for ports.

Even though these partnerships are actually in place they do not hold out any definite undertakings of benefits to participants. At the beginning it was natural enough that there should be considerable official reticence on this score pending some practical experience. The most that could be gleaned from initial consultations was that a failure to join could result in the application of the full range of security measures. This has since been modified, insofar as C-TPAT is concerned, by general, carefully phrased suggestions that participation might carry some benefits in such directions as reduced routine data demands, but these fall far short of any firm commitment.

Other uncertainties are the extent to which C-TPAT might be extended to take in foreign participants in trade and transport operations with the US and to what extent the CSI will include ports in countries closer to the potential sources of security risks than most of the advanced port communities recruited so far.

Some trade delegates to the Task Force have produced outline Partnership Agreement principles for exporters/importers (International Chamber of Commerce), the express delivery industry (International Express Carriers Conference) and shipping (International Chamber of Shipping) but both the ICC and ICS delegates qualified their views as provisional and informal.

Others, including TIACA were not sure how far proposals for voluntary undertakings might be used, at some future date, as a basis for formal regulation and stressed that any contributions they made to the debate were not to be taken as in any way committing their members.

This is a very ill defined part of the Task Force territory. It will be interesting to see how the WCO Council may relate the corresponding elements in the Task Force report to developing unilateral US partnership initiatives.

All the facilitation/security issues mentioned so far figure in the list of subjects that the WCO Council Resolution allocated to the Task Force in June 2002.

The secure supply chain concept, which has no specified place among them, has emerged into prominence, partly because of logical development from such other topics as advance cargo information, UCR and Customs/trade partnerships and partly because of growing awareness of developments in security thinking elsewhere, notably in the US, EU and some parts of the UN.

The concept has not yet reached the degree of precision, or, indeed, the level of unqualified support, that would justify and support a reliable firm assessment of its potential implications for facilitation.

Of course, high-quality performance by all commercial participants, along the whole of the supply chain, including a core of sound business security for consignments and controlling information systems, is most desirable. Its full range of services and features would be bound to advance and rely on many �pure� facilitation elements.

On the other hand, here, as in advance cargo information, truly international facilitation could be severely damaged, and progress long postponed, if necessary changes are thrust forward too forcefully and too rapidly, based on what may be a comparatively short-term exceptional urgency, and designed to meet special national or regional priorities.

No origin-destination supply chain, corresponding to facilitation as well as security requirements and principles, will work without close daily co-operation by all Customs services concerned in a transaction, the use of automated risk-assessment systems, including mutual recognition of authorised traders, carriers and other intermediaries, high-standards of official and commercial integrity at all stages and agreed international security standards for all loading, handling, storage and movement activities and related satisfactory methods of certifying, verifying and monitoring performance.

It will take many years to assemble these elements and bring anything like general international acceptance and implementation to such a reality. Any attempt to develop closed �preferential� security/facilitation trading channels for a few developed economies, however, large their share of the international market, would be seen, quite rightly, as highly divisive and discriminatory.

It would be tempting, but ill advised to draw too many favourable and encouraging conclusions, on the validity and practicality of this very demanding and extensive concept, from the two known example of its successful application � the Business Anti-Smuggling Coalition (BASC) and some core features of integrated express delivery services.

The BASC secure supply chain, originally devised to help legitimate Colombian exports to the USA to avoid the endemic delays and physical inspections attending notorious drug trafficking patterns, depends on the exercise of full commercial force by a consignor to impose required security standards on those employed as suppliers of transport and other intermediary services, all along the line of the transaction, up to arrival in the hands of import Customs. This has received surprisingly little attention or extended application by US Customs for security purposes and may therefore be seen as of limited use and application.

The express integrators offer an even more watertight security pipeline because they manage almost the entire movement and handling of a good proportion of their consignments within high performance automated, end-to-end automated systems, and have long-established excellent quality security systems in respect of staff and premises.

It would be unrealistic to imagine that such systems can be satisfactorily synthesised from an assembly of individual functional links, even if each is endowed with heightened, well-defined, certified and monitored security standards. Whatever the security pressures it will take years to produce the necessary standards and put in place the required supervisory systems. Even then, however, without the vital element of central management and responsibility, all that will result is a set of secure links without any reliable relationship within a truly effective chain.

The facilitation lobby, therefore, would be wise to insist, as far as possible, on a carefully calculated and measured approach to the secure supply chain concept.

Civil aviation, should, in particular, seek to protect and support its own well-tried and capable international (ICAO) and regional (ECAC) consultative and regulatory mechanisms and ensure that they are responsible for any security standards that may be required and shown feasible in respect of international airborne traffic.

This paper makes no attempt to propose any positive lines of policy or to suggest any limits to the subject matter that might be brought into initial common view by the ECAC Security and Facilitation Working Groups.

It is simply an account of some issues that may be of interest, arising principally from current and recent discussions in the World Customs Organisation and other official and commercial meetings attended by TIACA delegates.

TIACA looks forward to the opportunity of following and participating in the future work of both Working Groups and hopes that the privilege of observer attendance may be extended to any joint discussions.