Terrorism
Islands Respond to Terrorist Attackes
Fallout to Many Pacific Islands is Immediate and May be Long Term.
In a heavily interdependent world, where globalization means economic forces affect companies and countries without respect to national borders, it is no wonder most Pacific Islands are reeling following the deadly September 11th terrorist attacks in the United States. From the U.S.-affiliated islands in the Western Pacific to the independent nations of the South Pacific, the aftermath of the ghastly attacks was immediate, and the long-term effects look to be serious and possibly crippling in some areas.
The islands hardest hit in the first days and weeks after the attacks were the U.S.-affiliated islands: the territories of American Samoa and Guam; the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas; and the independent nations of Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands. They felt the impact first because their airport authorities are closely linked to the U.S. federal government, and because of their significant exposure to the Japanese visitor market, long sensitive to international incidents.
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In these U.S.-linked islands, all airports were shut down for nearly a week after September 11. They come under the control of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, which began imposing stringent reviews of airport security systems (long known for being casual or barely existent in most islands).
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But that was a short-term problem. The bigger impact, particular in Micronesia, was the hit the local tourism industries took as a result of the terrorist attacks. Within days, 25,000 Japanese cancelled trips to Guam, and the number continued to grow. This after Guam reported a 5 percent increase in visitors for the year through August, with the visitor count at 909,476.
About 100 Guam-based Continental Micronesia flight attendants were furloughed October 1, and Continental was slashing its service to Japan and other Asian cities as passengers cancelled reservations in droves. In fact, the airline’s Texas-based chairman went on record as saying the carrier’s future was in doubt unless it (and other U.S. airlines) received significant federal assistance. That plan was in the works, but the future of nearly every American air carrier remains uncertain.
Tumon Bay, Guam’s Waikiki Beach, was a ghost town in the days following the attacks. The biggest challenge for Guam’s tourism industry, said Guam Visitors Bureau General Manager James Nelson, boils down to this: “Tourists are afraid to travel by air.”
Guam airport manager Jerry Yingling says that $60,000 was lost during the three day FAA-required shut down. “We are hoping that the negativity of flying on airlines will soon be brought to an end and confidence resumes once our airline partners are positive about returning to normal operations,” says Yingling.
To ease the burden on the more than 4,000 passengers stranded in the Northern Marianas by the air travel ban after September 11, Marianas Visitors Authority Managing Director Perry Tenorio said Verizon Pacifica donated 2,000 calling cards valued at $5 each. The Northern Marianas was hard hit by the falloff in tourism, however. Two weeks after the terrorist attacks, industry officials estimated the commonwealth’s hotel occupancy rate was below 5 percent. It was reported that the commonwealth’s hotels need an average occupancy rate of 70 percent to break even.
Tourism officials in the Marshall Islands say that the Japanese have always been skittish travelers: during the Gulf War and after the Korean Airlines crash in Guam in the 1990s, the number of Japanese travelers dropped precipitously. Over the past two years, with a locally-based Japanese scuba dive master, the Marshalls has dramatically increased the flow of Japanese divers — so much so that during the July and August months, Hotel Robert Reimers, which handles the Japanese dive groups, was so fully-booked that it had to pass divers onto its competitor, the Outrigger Marshall Islands Resort. But in the wake of September 11, some dive groups began canceling.
For years, security in most small island airports was a joke: cursory checks of carry on baggage, waist-high (or no) fences around the airfield, and a generally relaxed we-know-everyone attitude. It’s been changing in recent years, but airports in the Micronesian region are still far from U.S. standards or even their larger neighbors such as Guam and Saipan.
Various changes are taking place in the wake of September 11:
• At Guam’s International Airport, concrete poles have been put in place separating the drive-up off-loading areas from the terminal, and the flying public has been told to check in at least three hours ahead. An off-airport service for checking in luggage located at DFS Galleria in Tumon has been closed.
• In Majuro, normally relaxed access to the airport’s VIP lounge — with direct access to the tarmac — has been rerouted through the airport departure security screening area, halting direct access by the public.
• In Pohnpei, Continental took the security one step further by banning all carry on luggage.
The situation isn’t much different south of the equator. Security at South Pacific airports is “very slack,” says George Faktaufon, secretary general of the Association of South Pacific Airlines (ASPA), an organization to which all of the region’s major airlines belong.
“It is very difficult for the airlines to do anything about airport security because airports are run by governments. We’ve been talking about the problem for years but nobody does anything.”
Faktaufon said Nadi Airport in Fiji was the only major airport in the South Pacific to have “some form of security presence” in the way of checks and guards.
At a meeting in late September, Pacific Islands Forum aviation ministers began to grapple with the security problems they face. They agreed to create a Pacific Aviation Safety Office, which would provide surveillance, airworthiness and licensing services for regional countries, particularly the smaller states that don’t have significant aviation authorities. Currently, some Pacific Islands countries contract out their air safety services to larger countries, such as Australia and New Zealand.
At the meeting, they agreed to do the following:
• Approve in principle an inter-governmental cooperative approach to establishing the Pacific Aviation Safety Office (PASO).
• Appoint a task force to solicit detailed cost proposals from countries interested in hosting it; and work out a detailed implementation plan, including funding and membership scenarios.
Photo: Fiafia D. Sunia
