The recent atrocity committed at Sharm el-Sheikh airport where it has now been established that an explosive device was planted on the Russian Airbus A321 aircraft killing all 224 people on board has focussed attention again on the vulnerability of aircraft to terrorist attacks.

After hearing reports of Egyptian officials offering passengers the chance to skip the scanning queues in return for a cash donation, it is equally clear now that security at Sharm el-Sheikh airport had been known to be lax for some while.

About 18 years ago, people may remember the incident when an Air Malta flight to Frankfurt was ‘hijacked’ by a man on board and diverted to Istanbul. The incident ended peaceably enough without loss of life. I was a member of the board of inquiry set up by Prime Minister Alfred Sant to establish what had occurred and the lessons to be learnt.

One of the key lessons was that security at MIA had been lax. The man who boarded the aircraft had got though all the checks and searches completely undetected despite having wires and batteries attached to his body to simulate a ‘bomb’.

Last summer, a young Italian couple, desperate to catch their Ryanair flight to Bari and arriving late at Malta International Airport, broke through security and dashed onto the flight apron to stop the flight leaving without them.

A week before this security breach, an Englishwoman had inveigled her way into the luggage unloading area – a secure area to which outside members of the public do not have access unless they hold a security pass – by waving her passport at the soldier on duty at the gate. She then proceeded to help herself to somebody else’s luggage on the conveyor belt and walked out with it.

Two breaches of security at MIA in the space of a few days just four months ago, and another a few years ago, tell us something about the vigilance of those on duty at Malta’s International Airport. It exposes a number of vulnerable points in the system and gives a worrying indication of the standards of security in place. While thankfully nothing untoward happened on those occasions, it might have.

Just recently, I flew to London from MIA. In the light of these events, and conscious of what had happened at Sharm-el-Sheikh a month ago, I was particularly interested to see how tight security arrangements at Luqa were.

I saw no obvious lapse of security asI went through, but there was muchchatter among the security staff and none of the rigour which I was to experience on my return from Heathrow – or which I have noted at airports like Schiphol and Frankfurt.

The vulnerable points at MIA are numerous. Security is only as strong as the weakest link

Security screening is a boring job. It is very hard for people to remain constantly vigilant and sloppiness is almost inevitable. It would be unfair to conclude that airport security in Malta is lax – perhaps, this is how we are with our relaxed Mediterranean ways – but may be it is also something the MIA director of security should urgently look at.

Five months ago, the administrator of the US Transport Security Administration (TSA) was fired after publication of checks carried out at American airports by undercover agents of the Department of Homeland Security.

Its inspector general reported that in 95% of cases, his agents were able to pass smuggled fake explosives and other banned devices through all the screening processes and physical frisking.

He told Congress: “The failures included failures in technology, in standard procedures and human error. We found layers of security simply missing.” Devastatingly, he added: “These results were not unexpected.”

They were not unexpected in part because there is no system compatible with reasonable freedom of travel that could guarantee identification of every undercover agent’s device, or even those of a real assassin. The safest airline in the world is El Al, the Israeli national carrier. At its main hub near Tel Aviv, hold bags are put through a decompression chamber that simulates the atmospheric pressure that can set off bombs in flight. On each flight El Al has armed marshals disguised as ordinary passengers.

Moreover, only El Al practices so-called profiling of passengers. It employs people who have been trained in psychological observation and are looking primarily for the terror suspect. Bluntly put, it subjects Muslim passengers to far more stringent security checks than it does Jewish or Christian ones. This is something that for political reasons is not contemplated by American or European airport authorities.

The result of the refusal of most Western airports to go down the El Al route – essentially on grounds of cost as much as political correctness – is that we have procedures in place which are both random and vulnerable, in which every passenger is treated as a potential terrorist. This leads to both casualness on the part of security staff and considerable frustration for millions of passengers.

It is an unwieldy system of deterrence aimed at persuading a tiny number of would-be bombers that they are running a risk of detection if they try to take a device on board.

What all this overlooks, however, is there are other ways that a bomb can be planted on an aircraft – other than a suicide bomber taking advantage of poor security to smuggle explosives through the airport scanners, or a passenger trying to sneak in a device as they go through security control?

As one looks around the Malta International Airport while waiting to board a flight, my own guess is that we are probably more vulnerable to a number of other methods for planting a bomb on board an aircraft.

How thorough are our control checks on the caterers who might hide the device in the galley area? What about the aircraft cleaners who could hide a small device while the aircraft is being prepared for its flight? Are cleaners and catering staff subjected to proper screening on their way into work, or is it simply a matter of checking the ID card, if that?

What about the terrorist intruder who is waved through an entrance to an air-side section in the airport by a corrupt official? Or the intruder who simply walks through emergency fire doors or into a security area, as happened twice last summer?

What about the baggage-handlers who might not be security-checked on entry to the airport? The number of valuables stolen from checked-in bags show how easy it is to put a bomb into somebody else’s bag by a baggage handler. Does MIA have CCTV monitoring in these areas?

The vulnerable points at MIA are numerous. Security is only as strong as the weakest link. Almost invariably, breaches of security occur because human beings are slack, distracted, not well trained, or simply because those in charge of security have not anticipated what could happen.

Given the crucial importance of the security reputation of Malta’s International Airport to the country’s tourism economy and the proximity of Malta to some of the world’s most desperate terrorists, it behoves those responsible for the security of millions of passengers each year to ensure that arrangements are as vigilant, tight and fool-proof as possible. The maintenance of public confidence is vital.