According to today’s Irish Times border police at a Slovakian airport last Saturday ‘accidentally’ sent 96g of high-grade explosives in the luggage of an unsuspecting passenger on a flight to Dublin as the result of a botched sniffer dog training exercise. The dog handler had placed two sets of explosives in luggage one of which was found by the dog, the other he apparently ‘forgot’ about until the flight was ready for take off. He then informed his airport authority who telexed (remember telex?) a message about the error through to Servisair, the baggage handlers at Dublin Airport instead of the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA).
Of course the fact that security at Dublin airport failed to discover the explosives during the luggage check is a serious issue, but then trying to lay blame on them for their potentially fatal mistake is far more worrying. The Slovakians didn’t contact the DAA directly until Tuesday and then had the audacity to criticise the Gardaí for arresting the owner of the luggage!
Servisair, the company who received the initial message and decided that it wasn’t worth passing on to the DAA, say that they receive hundreds if these telex messages every day. Does this mean that these mistakes are happening in their hundreds every day and that bits of plastic explosives are left on random baggage all the time? Surely not, one would hope that a message informing them of explosive material aboard a specific flight would raise the red flag. Oh, it’s OK for them, they weren’t travelling on the flight, they were happy to knowingly allow the flight to take off.
The telex sent to Servisair reads:
Dear Colleagues, please be informed that we have received info from police department of (Tatry Airport) that there is forgotten sample of explosive material in baggage on bord of flight no V58230.
The sample of grey colour is in plastic bag (size 5×5cm) in the rare part of black backpack (under harnesses) in hold no 3 or 4. The sample is not dangerous, it is only used for dog training. It is not able to cause explosion nor fire (no power source of detonator is included) Pilot in command has been informed about this sample by ATC (air traffic control). We would like to kindly ask you to return that sample with flight no V58231. Thx for coop.
So if they really believed that there were no safety issues, why did they not do what they were asked and remove it from the passenger’s luggage and send it back?
News source: IrishTimes.com
