Third Training Seminar for Staff with Specific Air Security Tasks.

In 2002 the European Union enacted new regulations for air safety (EU Regulation 2320/2002). The aviation industry was required to introduce completely new controls on people, luggage, cargo and postal freight. Access control to sensitive security areas and staff training were also regulated in 2002.

Since then EU member states have been obliged to develop a uniform training programme as a national model that all companies operating in the aviation industry must use to train their staff. However, as of autumn 2006 the German government hadn’t put forward a training programme, on the contrary: a regulation was to be developed. Eurowings cannot wait for this to come about, though, as the EU regulation stipulates that no aviation company is exempt from training its staff appropriately. 

The Security Department thus trains its “members of staff with specific air security tasks” in a “security seminar” lasting 35 hours using its own training plan. Eurowings is thus the first German airline to develop such a training method. All “old” and some “new” security trainers were invited to participate to acquaint them with the new regulations, laws and decrees.

The seminar didn’t just rely on written materials. On the third day of the seminar participants were able to visit Dortmund Airport and learn from those in charge of air security what safeguards airports had to assure and what costs airport operators had to bear. Following on from this, participants were able to visit the automatic and multi-level luggage handling and control facilities for checked luggage, an area normally out of bounds for the public. Seminar participants were amazed at the fact that luggage was checked for prohibited objects and explosives in such an elaborate way.

At the end of the seminar there was an hour’s test on the learning objectives and then the opportunity to hear Markus Dönges talk. He is the chief inspector of the German police’s “Aviation Protection Unit”. Participants found out about the deployment of sky marshals. At the end of the week the participants in the aviation security seminar (among whom two colleagues from Germanwings and one from EAE) could look back on an exhausting but also enriching series of seminars. In the future they will be able to appreciate their air security tasks and some well-grounded knowledge behind them.