Fix Based Operators: Can They Be Used In The Next 9/11?

As a new watch commander at my airport, I drove up to the Fix Base Operator (FBO) private jet center terminal, located near the end of my airport’s runway. I parked my police unit and walked inside through sliding glass doors. I looked around and noticed there were no security guards in the lobby of the two-story private business. I said hello to the female desk attendant and walked through the lobby and out the front door to the parking lot adjacent to the public roadway. I turned around and looked at the openness of the private jet center as I saw a taxing Southwest airliner go by the FBO through the two sets of glass doors. It seemed to me our FBO’s were left behind by the nation’s post 9/11 security plans. Over the next several years, a number of incidents at airports I visited and news accounts at airport FBO’s throughout America reinforced my initial assessment.

As part of an airport security study, I flew to a sister airport to examine the airport police security procedures and best practices. The police administrator met me at the arrival gate and gave me a tour of the International Airport. During the drive on the airport roadway, we stopped on the ramp near a Fixed Base Operator. We watched a privately owned car drive up to an electronic gate that led onto the airfield, and as the administrator explained to me his FBO airport procedures, the car entered with the driver’s swipe of an access card in the gate card reader. As the gate arm opened, the car drove onto the airport ramp, and as the gate started to close, a motorcycle whizzed through the gate without stopping. I turned to the officer and said, “We call that piggybacking at my airport.” He looked embarrassed and said he’s calling an officer to cite the motorcycle rider. We watched until his officer made contact with the airport employee who apparently felt secure access entries were a suggestion and not a rigid Homeland Security rule.

As we continued to drive on the road next to the runway, our conversation immediately went to something we were both thinking; what if the motorcycle was laden with explosives, like the motorcycle suicide bomber that killed two U.S. soldiers and ten Afghan students in Afghanistan. What would be the catastrophic effects if this motorcycle, rigged with explosives, targeted a fueled and passenger-laden jet parked at the terminal? We both knew the answer. No one could stop it in time if the motorcycle were the instrument of a terrorist plan. We also discussed the vulnerability of the FBO gate and inability of his FBO employee to make a physical inspection of the driver’s identification before entering the airfield.

In March of this year, Curt Epstein wrote an article on AINonline titled “Security More important Than Ever at FBO’s.” Epstein noted the FBO’s famous and wealthy clientele might be vulnerable to the threats of international and domestic terrorists and airport criminal activity at airports. Epstein stressed FBO employees must have “situational awareness” as a central component of an FBO security plan. He also placed emphasis on the need for proper physical elements such as well place lighting, cameras, and so on.[1]  I commend Epstein insightful and accurate assessment. In 2006, I developed a terrorist and criminal airport watch curriculum. I gave the two-hour course to my airports FBO’s employees and other on and off airport property businesses and their employee groups. As in any good law enforcement neighborhood/business watch program, situational awareness is one of the critical components of the teaching points.

What Governs FBOs Security?

The general vulnerability of an FBO at a commercial or general aviation airport in the United States is a unique security problem. FBO’s and general aviation businesses, for the most part, are self-regulated according to TSA’s “Security Guidelines for General Aviation Airport Operators and Users” publication A-002, September 11, 2013. The TSA provides the FBOs and America’s general aviation recommended security guidelines that offer suggestions to the owners of the FBO on how to implement security, but it holds the FBO and the commercial airport responsible for the security procedures under the airport security plan. FBOs can utilize security guards but are not required to and can use the attendant behind an openly accessible counter to verify who the person is and why they want to access the airfield. Anyone can walk into an FBO without saying a word, sit down, and simply watch the business interaction between the attendants, pilots, and passengers. In time, an attendant will notice you sitting on the lounge chair watching the television and would offer a polite, “How can I help you?” if they are not too busy. There is little funding in Homeland Security budgets for FBO’s and general aviation security. What little-allocated funding there is goes to Washington D.C. airports for the protection of the national capital from general aviation threats.

Incidents at FBOs

At an airport in America, a watch commander went to his airport FBO terminal on several occasions in response to the FBO calls for help concerning homeless or mentally ill people wandering into his airport FBO terminal. The FBO’s front doors were large glass motion operated sliding doors, and anyone could enter the terminal from these doors. On one occasion, a transient female walked into the FBO one morning as a pilot, and his passengers, walked through the doors and onto the airfield, and the woman followed. Other passengers told the escorting FBO employee the woman was not part of their group, and he called the police. When the police arrived, the female trespasser told the officers she needed to fly to Washington D.C. to see President Obama. On two other occasions, mentally ill persons again walked out onto the airfield by “piggybacking” with other passengers and pilots while being escorted by an FBO employee. When the flight manifest or an observant flight attendant revealed the trespassers, the airport police were summoned and arrested the suspects.

In an incident reported by the Dallas News, a man named Rueben Martinez drove up to the FBO gate. The news story said; “he pulled up to the gate in his 2007 Chevy Tahoe and started punching buttons on the gate-access pad. One employee opened the gate to talk to him.” Rueben, seeing the gate was open, took off and drove on the taxiway of the airport at an estimated 100 miles per hour. Dallas police officers located him in an aircraft hangar and arrested him.

I conducted an FBO and general aviation airfield access study at a number of commercial airports in my state. While driving around with the airport police, the lack of security for the airfield area of operation and their FBO terminals was unsettling. At one FBO, a pilot or person who wishes to access the airfield, drives up to a gate, swipes an electronic card and enters the airfield unmonitored. If the individual does not have a card, he communicates with the attendant by an intercom, provides a name that is on the authorization list, and the gate is opened remotely from the FBO terminal. Are these types of procedures ‘Best Practices’ for an airport FBO after 9/11?

On November 23, 2014, at an FBO at Mineta San Jose International Airport, 39-year-old Miguel Zaragoza trespassed onto the FBO airfield taxiway, and an observant FBO employee saw him on the ramp. At first, Zaragoza cooperated with the employee but then ran away and commandeered a City of San Jose truck and drove it to the curb of the airport’s terminal ‘B’ where the airport police arrested him. Rob Seaman wrote an article in the Fly Corporate online page titled “Security a real concern at an FBO.” Seaman told of an incident at his FBO where his FBO line crew saw a man on their camera monitors attempting to access the airfield from inside their FBO. The suspect was not a passenger or employee, and the line crew confronted the man inside the hanger. The man asked the line crew suspicious questions, and they determined he was a high risk and escorted him out of the FBO. Fortunately, there were two airport police cars in the parking lot, and the police arrested him. According to Seaman, the police told the line crew they previously arrested the suspect for another attempt to enter the airfield at a separate location.[2]

“Drug smuggling aircraft and pilots walk through, fixed-based operators every day. The community should pay more attention.”[3]

Many actual threats at FBO’s are clandestine and rarely are found unless they are discovered by a law enforcement agency investigation, or an employee sees a criminal mistake on the airfield on in the aircraft. Drugs transported by aircraft parked at FBO’s are not that big of a surprise being as it is the “Golden Age of Drug Trafficking” according to the Keegan Hamilton article in the April 2016 VICE NEWS website story. I was at an FBO at an airport in America, and a narcotics investigator was investigating an FBO employee for possible drug dealing. The employee had a previous arrest as a drug dealer and for some reason decided to gain employment at an FBO as an aircraft cleaner. The investigator found the drug dealer lied on his job application to gain employment at the FBO. At the time of the investigation, the employee was using his cousin to assist him. The only problem with that was the cousin was not an FBO employee, had no secured access media card and was wandering the airfield with the suspect washing airplanes. As you can imagine, any number of scenarios were possible in this situation.

The United Nations estimates the value of illegal drug sales in 2012 as $1.3 Trillion. Interpol estimates a lower profit of $400 Billion, but regardless, the problem is here to stay with over 247 million people in the world using illegal drugs within the past year. Drug trafficking is serious but more dangerous is the nexus of cartels and terrorists. These types of incidents are of great concern, but there are many different types of security concerns that can play out at our nation’s FBO’s. Jeffrey Goldberg wrote an article for The Atlantic titled, “Private Plane, Public Menace.” Goldberg hitched a ride on a private eight-seat plane from New Jersey Teterboro Airport to Dulles Airport. Goldberg describes entering the FBO with his friend who merely gave a few numbers of an aircraft identification tail number to gain access to the airfield where they met the pilot of the plane whom they’d never met before and climbed aboard. Goldberg has been a critic of TSA for years, and the wheels were turning in his mind, as he was thinking of the aircraft he was flying in and how a terrorist would hijack the aircraft. Goldberg asked his friend, “So let’s say that I’m a terrorist pilot, and I have a bag filled with handguns, and I shoot these two pilots and then I take control of the plane and steer it into the headquarters of the CIA. What’s to stop me?” His friend replied, “There’s nothing stopping you, all you need is money to buy a plane or charter.[4]

How Do We Improve FBO Security

So what do we do to improve security at FBO’s? To answer this question, we have to understand FBO’s are hospitality businesses that strive to give 5-Star customer service to their clientele. FBO’s compete to obtain the general aviation business in sales of aviation fuel, parking, aircraft maintenance and hanger fees. An FBO success depends on employee’s customer service to patronize pilots and passengers for their continuous use of their FBO’s. FBO employees will naturally be cautious not to upset a possible customer until the person is deemed a trespasser or violates other Homeland Security protocols inside their terminals.

I’ll admit, I frequently stopped in at my airports FBOs and hung out in the lobby to sample the Starbucks Coffee and fresh baked chocolate chip cookies, (no doughnuts). While there I observed the busy FBO employees attention on incoming aircraft, boarding aircraft, fueling, cleaning, mechanical maintenance, stocking, and arriving and departing passengers in the lobby to name a few tasks of busy FBO employees. It was interesting to see the dynamics of a busy FBO, but I also realized security quickly becomes a secondary task when FBOs are hectic with business.

In the two previous FBO terminal trespassing incidents, the police were not immediately called to the FBO before the employees contacted the suspects. In our post 9/11 world, airport employees must consider any trespasser or suspicious person an immediate danger that warrants an expedited response by the airport police. While waiting for the police, if an imminent threat is found, then the airport employee can decide, only as a last resort, to place himself in harm’s way to save others.

A security trained, observant and informed FBO staff at America’s airports is the beginning of a successful FBOs security program in a post 9/11 world and is the first step in the right direction, but it will take much more. In England, the London City Airport Jet Centre and RAF Northolt FBOs have implemented 100% security screening for all flights from their terminals. These FBOs have gone above Britain’s national standards in security protocols for their private businesses. England’s National Aviation Security Program requires all private jets weighing over 10,000 kg to screen their passengers and baggage. Germany and Switzerland also have heightened FBO security measures like England but a vast majority of European countries FBOs, like the U.S., do not. [5]

Modified DCA Access Standard Protocols For All FBOs?

           I am sure this suggestion will meet considerable opposition from different aviation industry groups, but I recommend implementing a version of the TSA DCA Access Standard Security Program requirements for all FBOs. This would apply to any FBO aviation business that flies paying customers on private jets. Is this extreme? In many eyes, yes, but the implementation of a modified type of DCA Access Standards at all FBO’s would help to mitigate a 24 ton G550 from becoming a missile crashing into a vital national infrastructure.

           If you ‘Red Team’ all the potential FBO security failures, you will be alarmed at the number of possible terrorist threats that can originate from FBOs. When you base your assessment on an FBO proximity to commercial airport terminals and nearby vital infrastructures only flying minutes from many airports, the red flags start flying. How easy could the stolen passenger jet, taken from an FBO at St. Augustine Airport in Georgia, been used in a terrorist plot? Certainly, more should be done to strengthen our nations FBOs security. As Gavin de Becker said, we should sometimes let our minds take us to the dark side to realize the dangers facing us. Having been a member of SWAT for 15-years and participating in various types of tactical and explosive training, I am very concern by what I could do with three paramilitary personnel in an operation involving an FBO, and its general aviation components. Enough said about that.

           In my next companion post, the General Aviation dangers will shed more light on the national threat posed by private aircraft, but in the meantime some less stringent DCA recommendations are:

1. Increase stricter security access controls at all FBOs.
2. A legal form of picture identification will be verified by employees before admittance into an FBO or General Aviation area and required for entering through general aviation terminals and FBOs.
3. Armed security guards placed at all FBO Terminals.
4. Required Risk Assessments with a review every two years for all FBOs and their security procedures.
5. 100 percent contraband screening of FBO passengers and employees for admittance onto an active commercial airfield.
6. Required 24-hour video surveillance monitoring of commercial airports FBO terminal, hangar, ramps, and points of entry.
7. Mandatory TSA “Airport Watch” or applicable airport business watch participation.

8. Mandatory background checks on all FBO employees with periodic rechecks.

[1] Curt Epstein, Security More Important Than Ever at FBOs, March 16, 2016, https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/business-aviation/2016-03-16/security-more-important-ever-fbos

[2] Rob Seaman, Security a real concern at an FBO, FLYCORPORATE.com, https://www.fly-corporate.com/security-a-real-concern-at-fbos/

[3] Gates L. Scott, “Illegal Usage of General Aviation/Commercial Aircraft,” PilotMag 2008, gateslscott.com, https://www.gateslscott.com/gates-blog/illegal-usage-of-general-aviation-commercial-aircraft-pilotmag-2008

[4] Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic titled, “Private Plane, Public Menace.” January, 2011

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/01/private-plane-public-menace/308335/

[5] Adam Twidel, “Private Jet Security - Is Self-Governance A Sensible Move? March 31, 2011,

    PRIVATEFLY Blog, https://blog.privatefly.com/private-jet-security-is-self-governance-a-sensible-move