What has changed in Zavantem airport since the Brussels attack?
In March 2016 a terroristic attack hit Brussels, and one of the two locations involved was Brussels International Airport. Since then, the airport has been implementing security, deploying the military and enhancing security checks. Nonetheless, after one year, reconstructions and augmented controls, several people still believe that the building is not safe enough and that the implementations applied are not sufficiently effective.
The airport first employed a security policy, that has been slowly replaced by a second one, and it has created different access point for vehicles, depending on their type (if they are taxis, ubers, relatives dropping passengers…). Controls decreased slowly, the damages got fixed and the atmosphere lightened again.
Nevertheless, some people raised critics and concerns for how the situation was managed and on how the security issue has been handled. In fact, some agents of the Aeronautical Police have written an open letter to their superiors to talk about the bad administration of the issue and about the lack of a proper security implementation plan in Zavantem Airport.
They affirm that the level of security is not high enough and that, although they have been notifying almost every day breaches in security, they have been ignored and nothing has been done. They noticed how incredibly easy it is to access to each floor of the building without supervision, and that some of the people working there have serious criminal record in their personal history -although this last fact was not confirmed by the President of the SLFP Police.
The letter keeps going, saying that the airport has been denouncing a lack of an appropriate police security since 2015, and that neither travelers or bags are controlled before accessing to the airport.
The Aeronautical agents demanded to be better equipped, with appropriate munitions, safety pressure chambers (against explosions) and a new and more effective procedure for abandoned luggage, less traumatic and drastic than the one in use. They also demanded a rapid response team, to better cope with sudden and dangerous situations.
The letter stressed the need for a more severe control over the people working with the luggage and over the luggage itself, asking to fire immediately the personnel with terroristic or serious criminal record.
After the attack, an alternative Flemish website, DeWereldMorgen.be , has conducted a research on the security level of Zavantem airport and on the badges released to the personnel, noting that it was quite easy to gain access to many areas of the airport, not following the procedure and finding escamotages to bypass the validity and coverage of the badge.
