Israel will this year issue all commercial airlines that fly to its territory with a locally invented pilot identification system designed to prevent September 11-style attacks, Israeli officials said on Tuesday.
Planes without the "Code Positive" system, which will be distributed free of charge as of May, will be turned back from Israeli airspace on pain of being shot down, an official said. Israel is widely considered to have the world's most sophisticated aviation security.
Such expertise has been in high demand abroad since al Qaeda squads hijacked American commuter jets and rammed them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. The hijackers are assumed to have killed the pilots.
Danny Shenar, head of security at the Transportation Ministry, described Code Positive as a credit card-size device that is personally and exclusively assigned to each pilot, and carried aboard their flights. "Using this card, it will be possible to verify that the person flying the aircraft is indeed the person qualified to fly it," Shenar told Israel's Army Radio.
"This system was developed to prevent aviation mega-terror over Israel, in the form of a plane coming through one of the borders and crashing into a target in Israel," he said. "The system should be operational by the end of the year."
Code Positive was developed by Israeli firm Elbit Systems Ltd Shenar declined to elaborate on the specific technology involved for security reasons. But he said it would be impossible for a hijacker to force a pilot to hand over identifying details, or otherwise pose as a legitimate member of the flight crew.
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