I am sorry that my article about airport security was interpreted by Mario Bugeja and Patrick Murgo as an attempt to sow doubt about security standards at Malta International Airport (their ‘Airport Security after 1997’, December 5).

The core message of my article was to draw attention, in the wake of the Sharm el-Sheikh atrocity, to the evidence presented to Congress by the Inspector General of US Transport Security Administration that in 95 per cent of cases his agents had been able to pass smuggled fake explosives and other banned devices through all the screening processes and physical frisking at US airports.

The two enemies of airport security standards are complacency and human fallibility.

The cases mentioned by our two heads of aviation security – does Malta really need two? – of what they term “misuse of an emergency exit to access the apron” and illicit access to a “controlled” area “not classed as a security restricted area” were, clearly, breaches of security – whatever spin these two aviation security experts try to place on the incidents.

Their explanations reveal a complacency which is all too common in Malta where standards of security and safety are regularly breached.

The tiger at the illegal Montecristo zoo, the Paceville night-club incident and the Paqpaqli accident are even more recent examples than the two MIA breaches last summer.

As to human fallibility, the ‘hijacking’ of an Air Malta flight in 1997 happened because of abysmal security screening, and the Lockerbie disaster – which I carefully avoided mentioning in my article –was caused by a device secretly planted in Malta.

I would feel much safer when I fly from Luqa airport if the Murgo-Bugeja duo placed less emphasis on the bureaucracy of the EU procedures they follow – important though these are – and more on the training, discipline, vigilance and professionalism of those individuals responsible for screening and access control to secure areas.