Acts of Unlawful Interference and Security Risk Management
Defining the act
An act of unlawful interference is an act or attempted act that endangers the safety of civil aviation, including unlawful seizure of an aircraft, sabotage, hostage-taking, forcible intrusion, and the introduction of weapons or dangerous devices on board or into an airport. Candidates must be able to classify a scenario correctly, because classification drives notification, response and reporting obligations.
Risk management in practice
Understand the risk management cycle: identify hazards, assess likelihood and consequence, select controls (avoid, reduce, transfer, accept), implement, and monitor. Know the hierarchy of controls and why procedural controls are weaker than engineering or design controls. Be able to explain the concept of residual risk and why it must be formally accepted by an accountable manager, not silently ignored.
Traps in questions
- Treating a bomb threat that turns out to be a hoax as not an act of unlawful interference; the attempt and the disruption still count.
- Confusing safety risk management with security risk management: the adversary adapts, so controls must be reviewed against a thinking opponent.
- Believing a control that has always worked needs no review.
- Forgetting the reporting chain: local police, the authority, and international notification where required.
Worked example
A passenger forces past an access door but is stopped before reaching the apron. This is an attempted act of unlawful interference: it must be classified, reported and investigated, and the control failure analysed, even though no harm occurred.