Analysis: a wave of terrorist attacks on African aviation is worrying experts

If the sudden disappearance of an EgyptAir flight turns out to be the work of terrorists, it will be the fourth such attack in the past year on air travellers in North African countries battling militant Islamic groups.

Even as airports in Europe and North America have strengthened security, experts say that gaps in screening of employees and passengers in the Middle East and Africa are being exploited in a way that security officials say should alarm all nations that fly to those areas.

“It calls into question the airports in that region,” said John Halinski, the former deputy administrator of the US Transportation Security Administration. “It’s something that needs to be looked at not just in those countries, but in any country that flies into that country.”

At least two of the previous attacks in the region were said by local authorities to involve airport employees who used their positions to skirt security, including October’s bombing of a jet carrying Russian tourists home from an Egyptian beach resort and an incident in February where explosives in a laptop blew a hole in a Somali plane. That, said Halinski, means authorities should be looking carefully at the possible involvement of insiders if the EgyptAir flight is determined to have been downed by a bomb.

The EgyptAir Airbus A320 carrying 66 people disappeared from radar on Thursday at 11,300 metres, about 290km from Egypt’s coast, according to online flight tracker FlightRadar24.

There’s evidence the jet turned and made abrupt movements in its final moments, according to Greek radar reports. That’s consistent with what would happen if a plane broke apart and the radars, which reflect radio waves off of metal pieces, tracked the debris, said John Cox, a former airline pilot and accident investigator who is president of Safety Operating Systems, an aviation consulting firm.