Aviation News international – Travelers today face an increasing number of global concerns, including war and terrorism in the Middle East, continued war in Central Europe, earthquakes in Japan, record numbers of weapons stopped at TSA checkpoints, grounding of commercial aircraft models and more.
This unsettled travel landscape is prompting travelers to pay an increasing amount of attention to the potential safety and security hazards they’ll face as they plan their upcoming trips, and the proportion of people buying travel protection plans is also rising accordingly.
“Traveler uncertainty generally increases traveler demand for emergency medical and security services,” said Dan Richards, CEO of The Global Rescue Companies, a leading provider of medical, security, evacuation and travel risk management services, and a member of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Travel and Tourism Advisory Board. “We’ve seen a 33 percent increase in traveler purchases of security services in the past year, and we expect that will continue.”
“We’re seeing an understandable increase in traveler concern worldwide, but it is the most pronounced in the Middle East. Nevertheless, international trip-takers continue to be undaunted with the idea of wartime travel. We’ve seen this traveler behavior since the war in Ukraine began, and we’re seeing it even more recently following the attack on Israel,” Richards continued.
Besides geopolitical challenges, the aviation industry is also trying to cope with the recent groundings of the Boeing 737 Max 9 model aircraft, following an accident in which the door of an Alaska Airlines plane blew out in mid-air, leading to a rapid cabin depressurization and subsequent emergency landing. The unsettling incident led the Federal Aviation Administration to ground all 737 Max 9s for thorough equipment safety inspections, disrupting airlines’ schedules, and causing flight cancellations and delays.
Luckily, advancements in safety and security technologies and services can help flyers find more peace of mind. For instance, travelers who might have worries about their aircraft’s safety can now leverage apps like FlightRadar24.
“You can’t kick the tires, look under the hood of the flight you’re taking, or talk to the captain of the flight,” said Harding Bush, a former Navy SEAL and associate director for security operations at Global Rescue. But, such apps display information about the specific aircraft assigned to their flight—including recent flight history, equipment age, past upgrades and overall safety records—empowering travelers with data-driven insights.
Bush, however, emphasized the safety of commercial flights, emphasizing that numerous studies consistently prove that airlines in the U.S. and other developed countries comply with International Civil Aviation Organization safety requirements. “That makes flights on a commercial airline much safer than driving an automobile on a highway,” he said.
In addition, the strict measures implemented post-9/11 to prevent weapons and explosives from boarding planes have nearly eliminated terrorist hijackings, according to the International Center for Counterterrorism.
“But as travel volumes increase, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is advancing programs to streamline traveler processing while maintaining security, including the Screening at Speed Program that allows PreCheck passengers to conduct a self-service screening with scant help from TSA security agents,” said Adam Bardwell, a former U.S. Army Green Beret and a Global Rescue security operations supervisor.
Like something out of a sci-fi movie, Screening at Speed technology will, “enable the scanning of walking passengers, acquiring data through most garments and reliably detecting a wider range of prohibited items, regardless of concealment,” according to DHS officials. The futuristic program, presently available only to PreCheck travelers, is set for a trial run at Las Vegas’ Harry Reid International Airport this month.
