the bulletin article 28/01/04, page-11

You will pardon me jumping into your thread here

Rito (post 226738) wrote

".....the security expert form janes was certainly bullish".

The following is the transcript of the article to which Rito is referring (original link to pdf file courtesy poster 's4rx7' on another board, typing (and any mistakes) are my own.)

Disc; I hold the stock.

From the 'The West Australian' Friday 30/01/2004
By Torranace Mendez

Aviation security expert Chris Yates has rejected the United States call for
armed air marshals preferring on the ground technology developed in Perth.

He said the call for armed marshals on some flights to the US could achieve
what terrorists wanted by introducing weapons onto aircraft.

The marshals were then vulnerable to being overpowered by terrorists, which
in turn could create panic and alarm in the cabin and lead to people being
held hostage.

“Putting sky marshals on planes is tacit acceptance by the government that
the system we have on the ground is failing” Mr Yates said yesterday.

Pilots, cabin crew and airlines did not favour air marshals, My Yates said.
“Security should begin and end on the ground” he said.

Mr Yates, who is civil aviation security editor for the Jane’s information
group, favours high-tech baggage screening developed by Cannington firm
QRServices over four years,

Atomic physicist Dr Peter Hayes said the system sent radio waves to baggage.
It could read signals that came back to reveal the presence of a range of
plastic explosives, The technology was similar to magnetic resonance imaging
used in brain scans.

Mr Yates describes the science as world beating.

“I think this is a piece of technology that is long awaited in the aviation
market” he said.
“It certainly advances our comfort zone in the range of explosives that can
be accurately detected”.

QR chief executive Kevin Russeth said he hoped to have the technology in
airports around the world in about 12 months.

Attorney General Phillip Ruddick is in the US for talks on homeland
security.

Several European nations have expressed reservations about sky marshals.

Mr Yates said a flight should grounded if intelligence indicated it was
unsafe to take off.