AFTA update

From AFTA’s chief executive, Jayson Westbury

WE ARE among the lucky ones it would seem with this latest terror plot set to impact upon the travelling public being foiled by our protective services. I talk of the weekend’s news of a plan to unleash terror on an aircraft in Australia being stopped before it could happen. The knock-on impact is clearly showing with the necessary increase to security at our airports meaning travellers are delayed during the security screening process. This is mainly due to a heightened level of screening and the border forces being more acutely tuned into issues that may raise flags to the safety of travellers.

I am sure there are plenty of travel clients not happy about this, but let’s face it, even as an impatient frequent traveller, I would rather be slowed down while the authorities are diligent to keep everyone as safe as they can and also to continue to give the confidence that the travelling public need to feel safe when flying. The last thing anyone would want would be an incident of the likes being reported as a potential terrorist attack in Australia.

Curiously the Australian Government, even with this foiled plot over the weekend, has not lifted its terror threat warning from PROBABLE. There are five threat warning levels. These threat levels in order from the lowest level of concern are - NOT EXPECTED, POSSIBLE, PROBABLE (the current level), EXPECTED and CERTAIN - and give an indication as to the Commonwealth Government’s expedition of potential terrorist attacks in Australia. Again this is good news as it would seem that this plot, which was stopped, does not present at this stage in any event, a need to lift the threat level.

Of course this is not a warning level that people in the travel industry want to be watching every day and it is clearly not necessary to do this. But for clients who express concern, it may be a reasonable way to give confidence to them based upon the Commonwealth government’s threat warning level. The Australian National Terrorism Threat Advisory System threat level has been unchanged at PROBABLE since 2014. If you are interested to know more you can CLICK HERE to get access to the Advisory System.

For now, while people are going to have an increased level of screening at airports (and I would suggest this may continue for a while), the important message is that we need to be thankful for the work done by our various government agencies to keep us as safe as possible in times that present continued threats to the freedom of travel and the freedom to feel safe.

It’s not a great start to August, but hopefully this situation is contained and it will not be long before things return to whatever is now a normal state.