A shocking practice...finally a good sense prevailed!

Govt forbids cracker use at airports
Prevalence Of Old Practice Shocks Home Ministry

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Vishwa Mohan\TNN
New Delhi: Use of crackers to scare birds at airports will now be a thing of the past. The practice, which security big-wigs at the Centre were unaware of so far, has literally sent shockwaves here when officials found that the age-old practice is prevalent at many airports despite availability of modern equipment like laser guns to do the job.
Realising how use of crackers can be a big security risk, the home ministry has now prohibited this and included it as one of the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) which is to be followed as a mandatory security precaution by airport officials.
The matter, among various security issues concerning all 51 airports in the country, was discussed in a meeting chaired by Union home secretary G K Pillai on Wednesday.
Officials had stumbled upon the prevalence of the practice of using crackers to frighten birds at airports when they looked into the probe details of the recent firecracker-on-plane incident in Kerala.
It was found that some ground handlers working at the Thiruvananthapuram International Airport had picked up crackers from the existing stock and put it on a Kingfisher aircraft in March. They had done this out of intra-personnel enmity among ground handlers as they wanted to put their colleagues in a spot.
“Investigation revealed the source of the cracker. It was quite shocking. We had then decided to ban this practice and included it in the list of dos and don’ts as part of SOPs of civil aviation security,” said a senior home ministry official.
Some of the airports in the country have been successfully using laser guns to scare birds before landing and take-off of flights. “Such or some other safe devices can be used by all airports of the country,” said an official.
Besides the issue, steps relating to biometric access, construction of watch towers, raising of perimeter walls, provision of adequate security staff and installation of CCTV cameras were also discussed in the meeting.
“A time-bound action plan was drawn up to enhance security at airports. While Delhi and Mumbai airports have implemented most of these plans, others have been asked to step up the required preparedness,” said the official.