SCRUTINY OVER who erred in allowing an airliner to carry explosives from Slovakia to Dublin last week has shifted to the control tower at Poprad-Tatry airport, after publication of an alleged transcript that shows a controller telling the pilot that his unintended cargo was not dangerous.
Slovak officials have blamed an airport policeman for leaving one sample of explosives in a passenger’s bag after his sniffer dog had found another sample as part of a security test on January 2nd.
He is also accused of failing to tell his police superiors about the incident until the following Monday, when they contacted passenger Stefan Gonda and the Garda.
Gardaí closed roads and evacuated buildings around Mr Gonda’s flat in Dublin’s Dorset Street last Tuesday, when they briefly arrested him and retrieved the 96 grammes of high-grade plastic explosives that had been hidden in his rucksack.
Slovakia’s opposition parties have demanded the resignation of interior minister Robert Kalinak over the debacle, but he has refused to go.
With operations in the Poprad-Tatry control tower now in question, it is likely that the country’s transport ministry will now come under pressure six months before a general election. In a telex sent to baggage-handlers at Dublin airport, staff at Poprad-Tatry also insisted that the explosives were not dangerous.
The transcript – which leading Slovak daily newspaper Smeclaimed to have obtained from sources close to the investigation into last week's incident – shows confusion between the dog-handler, airport tower and pilots before the take-off of the Danube Wings flight to Dublin.
The Irish Timeshas not been able to independently verify whether the transcript is genuine.
“It’s not dangerous. It doesn’t have the mechanism that makes it blow up, but it is packed in there, I left it there,” the policeman tells the control tower.
“And it’s not a ‘dummy’?”, the control tower asks.
“No, it’s not a dummy, it’s real,” the policeman responds.
“It’s real but without an ‘activator’?” the tower asks, and the policeman explains that it cannot explode without a detonator.
The tower then contacts the pilots who, along with the Boeing 737-400 that they were flying, had been leased by Danube Wings from Czech Airlines. The controller tells the flight crew that the police had forgotten to remove a “dummy explosive” from baggage loaded on to the aircraft.
“It’s not dangerous, they say, because it needs a detonator and other things, basically in itself it’s not dangerous, but it was forgotten among the baggage,” the tower tells the pilot.
When the pilot asks what the tower suggests he does about the problem, the controller tells him to alert staff at Dublin airport to the dummy explosives on board to prevent any security scare.
After a short pause, the transcript quotes the pilot as saying: “We’ll take option number one, to fly to Dublin with this dummy and try to explain things there somehow.” Before taking off, the pilot jokes: “But that [sniffer] dog shouldn’t get food for a week.”
In a statement to The Irish Timesyesterday, Czech Airlines defended its crew.
“If the transcript of the radio communication . . . is genuine . . . the information which the flight crew obtained by the control tower was not contrary to the safety regulations and did not prevent the flight from continuing,” said airline spokeswoman Hana Hejskova.
“Had it been otherwise . . . the pilots would not have been able to continue with the flight by any means.”