Govt must pay for aviation security: IATA

New Delhi: Governments must foot the bill for meeting aviation security threats which have cost global airlines and their passengers a whopping $7.4 billion last year, the IATA has said.

''Governments are obliged to foot the bill for security threats which are national challenges in the same manner as they would do in any other sector,'' the International Air Transport Association said in its latest report titled 'The Impact of September 11 2001 on Aviation.'

Airlines and air travellers ''currently pay a security bill that had ballooned to $7.4 billion by 2010'', IATA CEO and director general Antony Tyler said in the report.

Besides suggesting that governments should foot the bill on aviation security, he listed out four more ''major lessons in security''.

Asking world governments to embrace a risk-based approach to security screening, he said ''We must accept that there is no such thing as 100 per cent risk-free security. Governments must focus on the probable and not all that is possible and avoid policies driven by knee-jerk reactions.''

As for the resilience of the airline industry, Tyler said that three years after the 9/11 terror attacks, revenues and traffic surpassed 2000 levels, and by 2006, aviation returned to profitability, even though it was a weak 1.1 per cent margin.