Disasters a Case of Global Jitters

By Jill Smolowe

Everywhere, nerves were on edge. At London's Heathrow, the world's busiest international airport, armored vehicles and troops carrying automatic weapons stood guard during the stopover of an Air India flight. In Toronto four bomb threats, all crank calls as it turned out, compelled authorities to delay the loading of three flights and to pull a fourth off the runway. In Rome an Austrian Airlines DC-9 en route to Vienna was recalled following an anonymous bomb threat. At Boston's Logan International Airport yet another call about a bomb forced hundreds to vacate a terminal while police and sniffer dogs searched the building.

Though there were no new disasters last week to fuel the global jitters further, the images of recent violence lingered. A hijacking in Athens. An airport bombing in Frankfurt. A luggage explosion in Tokyo. A plane crash off the Irish coast. In the aftermath of so much tragedy, governments struggled to identify the causes and find and punish those responsible, while tightening security on the ground and in the air to prevent recurrences.

-- In Ireland, investigators from four nations were looking for clues to the midair disintegration of Air India Flight 182, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the Irish coast on June 23 en route from Toronto to Bombay via London, killing all 329 people on board. Amid widespread theorizing that a terrorist bomb aboard the Boeing 747 had caused the accident, investigators were considering other explanations, including the possibility that a spare engine being carried under the plane's right wing might have had something to do with the crash. Although hopes had been slim that the two flight recorders could be found at an estimated depth of 6,000 ft., at week's end sonar scanners aboard a British seabed operations vessel, H.M.S. Challenger, detected a firm signal that Irish authorities identified as the recorders' "homing blip."

-- In Japan, there were indications that a sophisticated timing device may have tripped the explosion of a bomb in a bag unloaded from Canadian Pacific Flight 003. The blast killed two baggage handlers and injured four others at Tokyo's Narita International Airport just 53 minutes before the Air India plane crashed. Speculation that the two events were connected was fed by the timing, the fact that both flights had originated in Canada and suspicions that Sikh extremists might have engineered the incidents in order to strike out at the Indian government. But at week's end investigators were forced to agree with Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's assessment that there was "no hard and fast evidence" of linkage.

-- From San Francisco to Cairo, airports tightened security arrangements, stepping up passenger, baggage and cargo inspections. After an initial flurry of reservation cancellations, these precautions seemed to calm travelers' fears. Still, the spate of bomb threats in the U.S. and overseas, all false alarms, forced several airliners to delay takeoffs or make emergency landings. Passengers did not complain. "I'd rather spend two hours in line here than end up in the Atlantic Ocean," said David Murley of Toronto as he headed for London.

-- In London and Washington, efforts were made to pre-empt terrorist attacks on the ground. British police launched a massive search after Scotland Yard reported that it had uncovered a plot by the outlawed Irish Republican Army to place bombs at twelve English seaside resorts. Police defused one device in a crowded hotel just 100 yds. from Buckingham Palace in London. Sixteen suspects were detained. At the U.S. State Department, officials announced plans to renovate or relocate almost half of its 262 embassies and consulates, citing vulnerability to espionage and terrorist attack as the reason for the new program, which is expected to cost $3.5 billion.

It was the fate of Air India Flight 182 that raised the most questions. While theories about the cause of the jet's breakup abounded, investigators from India, the U.S., Canada and Ireland had nothing conclusive to report by week's end about the third-worst airline disaster in history.* Bits and pieces of the wreckage plucked from the sea were sometimes heartbreaking: a red slipper, a limp rag doll, a waterlogged Teddy bear. Irish and British naval vessels and helicopters fanned out over a 5-sq.-mi. area. They retrieved 131 bodies, and by week's end the bulk of the wreckage had been located.

While proof remained elusive, some officials held to the assumption that the

jet had been downed by a bomb that was either carried aboard by a suicidal terrorist or planted on the 747 before it took off for London. Another scenario suggested that the extra 9,000-lb. jet engine being carried back to India for repairs might have dislodged, forcing the aircraft down. Such ferrying of an engine, in addition to the 747's four turbo fanjets, is considered routine airline practice, and Boeing officials dismissed the theory as "extremely farfetched." Had the engine caused a problem, they said, the pilot would have had time to make a Mayday call. Instead, the plane plummeted from its cruising altitude of 31,000 ft. in silence, disappearing from radar screens within a split second. Air India officials ruled out metal fatigue as a possible cause. Others, however, were less certain: Just because the plane was seven years old, said Jack Young, a U.S. investigator, "does not preclude the possibility of some structural failure."

The terror bomb scenario came mainly from Indian officials, who suspected that the incident might have been connected to the baggage explosion in Tokyo. The link, they suggested, might be two Sikh extremists, Ammand Singh, 32, and Lal Singh, 25. The two men are wanted by the FBI in connection with an alleged conspiracy to kill Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi during his visit to the U.S. last month. Ammand Singh, according to Indian officials quoted in the Toronto Globe and Mail, had flown to Toronto before the ill-fated Air India flight set course for London, while Lal Singh had traveled from Toronto to Vancouver carrying a ticket for Canadian Pacific Flight 003 to Tokyo.

Air India officials in Tokyo confirmed that an "A. Singh" and an "L. Singh" had booked seats on Canadian Pacific Flight 003 as well as on a connecting Air India flight from Tokyo to Bombay. Ultimately, neither man boarded either plane, although L. Singh did check his luggage through in Vancouver. The reservation for the connecting Air India flight from Tokyo prompted speculation that the bomb that exploded at Narita Airport, possibly in L. Singh's luggage, was meant to go off aboard the Tokyo-Bombay flight, but had detonated prematurely. Reports in the Japanese press that a plastic explosive had caused the Narita blast and that Lal Singh's fingerprints had been found on luggage fragments were not confirmed by Japanese officials.

Nor was there confirmation that the two Singhs booked on those flights were the Singhs sought by the FBI; all Sikh men use the name Singh. "There is still no definitive evidence linking (the fugitive Singhs) to the bombings," said Joseph Valiquette, an FBI spokesman in New York City. Such reservations were upstaged, however, by reports of a mercenary training camp in Birmingham where, according to the school's director, a man named Lal Singh had taken a course in explosives last November. FBI officials refused to comment on whether the fugitive Lal Singh had attended the school.

As the search for answers continued, tightened security arrangements went into effect at airports around the world. In Athens, the lift-off point for the hijacked TWA Flight 847, reinforced police detachments were stationed at check-in counters, and airport personnel conducted frequent hand searches of luggage. In West Germany, police used bomb-sniffing dogs to patrol terminals, and some passengers were asked to identify their luggage on the tarmac before it was loaded. In the U.S., the Federal Aviation Administration asked airlines to put into effect special procedures that included holding cargo for 24 hrs. before shipment and discontinuing curbside baggage check-ins on international flights.

Little by little, day by day, the stepped-up vigilance seemed to soothe the anxiety of travelers. Airlines and travel agents reported few canceled reservations in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. In the U.S., where almost 9,000 people abandoned plans to visit Greece in the first few days after the TWA hijacking, cancellations slowed to a trickle, and both Pan Am and TWA resumed service to Athens.

Despite the stronger security measures, however, aviation officials agreed that piecemeal attempts to combat air terrorism would not be sufficient. "The battle requires international solidarity," said Erich Becker, the chairman of Frankfurt Main Airport Inc. Toward that end, the governing council of the 156- member International Civil Aviation Organization convened in Montreal late last week to review airport security. The group will meet again later this month to discuss ways to improve inspection procedures.

However successful those efforts, it seems unlikely that even a worldwide campaign will be able to pre-empt all terror strikes. Recently at Paris' Orly Airport, reputed to be one of the safest in Europe, French Journalist Patrice Vanoni set out to test security arrangements. To the embarrassment of airport officials, he was able to slip a blank-loaded automatic pistol through the controls and onto an airliner. "Any terrorist who stakes out an airport long enough," he concluded, "can outwit the system."

FOOTNOTE: *In 1977 KLM and Pan American 747s collided on the ground in Spain's Canary Islands, killing 582; in 1974 the crash of a Turkish DC-10 near Paris left 345 dead.

With reporting by Mary Cronin/London and K.K. Sharma/New Delhi, with other bureaus