#INTHEAIREVERYWHERE

Harald Zielinski
Head Of Security And Environment
Lufthansa Cargo

      On September 11th, I was doing work as Head of Valuable Cargo Services here at FRA. I got a call by a friend who made me aware of the first aircraft crashing into the tower. I turned on the TV and had a look to get an overview. You have to know: I had just returned from a duty trip to NYC on September 8th and I really like NYC a lot.
      I saw the crash but didn’t understand the background as nobody did at the time. After a short time, I stopped watching TV to call my boss to make him aware of the story.
      A few minutes later, I returned to watch the news reports and realized the other tower was burning. It took a long time until I understood and realized what had happened. I didn’t have that much time in which to be shocked, because I desperately needed to take care of our valuable flights to the U.S. At this time, we had more than half a billion on board several aircraft.
      There was not a lot I could do at the moment; the money was inside aircraft, which had landed somewhere. The business of the next few days helped me a lot to get past those horrible pictures, which of course I will never forget. The last flight carrying cash returned to FRA on September 17th. Not one cent was missing from any of the flights we had. Boy, I tell you, we did park those aircraft somewhere where we had never been before, but nobody touched them—that was at least some good news.
      That day changed air cargo a lot. Nothing happened the very next day, but change has been continous and long lasting. I became Head of Cargo Security, a position we had not had before in Lufthansa Cargo. Since 9/11, we have increased by more than ten-fold the amount of money we spend on security, and we continue to improve in order to stay a market leader in cargo security.
      Cargo became important to the authorities, but, sorry to say, even today I know a few big states which do not take enough care with cargo, so there is room for improvement and for little ol’ me to make people aware of steps that need to be done.
      Lufthansa Cargo is well prepared when it comes to security, but we need to ask and challenge ourselves every day to be sure we are on the right track. We are ready for the challenges that may come up in any future planning, and we are taking security as a major and priority topic.
      The industry should speak with one voice in fighting for a worldwide, harmonized security regime. We are logistic people and we should now how much better one single and unified process is, in comparison to myriad different ones.