- ACI EUROPE has unveiled a new Strategy Paper on Hybrid Threats and Airport Resilience
- The strategy sets out a coordinated approach to strengthening preparedness and response
- It recognises airports as critical infrastructure
- The strategy calls for a clearer division of responsibilities between airports and authorities
- It also calls for dedicated funding mechanisms for resilience capabilities
ACI EUROPE has unveiled a new Strategy Paper on Hybrid Threats and Airport Resilience against the backdrop of an intensifying wave of security threats affecting European aviation. These include recent bomb threats, drone incursions and cyberattacks. The strategy recognises airports as critical infrastructure whose role extends far beyond air transport. Airports underpin European connectivity, economic activity, essential supply chains, emergency response and even military mobility.
European airports are already taking proactive steps to address the evolving threat landscape, investing in cybersecurity, crisis management and operational resilience. However, the increasingly complex, interconnected and unpredictable nature of hybrid threats requires a step change in cooperation between airport operators, airlines, all other operational partners involved, national security authorities, governments and European institutions.
The new Strategy Paper sets out a roadmap for moving from fragmented, largely reactive responses to a more integrated and forward-looking approach to airport resilience. It advocates for hybrid threats to be addressed across aviation security, cybersecurity, operational continuity and crisis management, rather than through separate structures operating in isolation. The strategy calls for a clearer division of responsibilities between airports and competent authorities, including on threat detection and response, alongside dedicated funding mechanisms to ensure that resilience capabilities can be developed and maintained across the European airport network.
Olivier Jankovec shared “Hybrid threats can no longer be treated as a narrow specialist issue. They should be understood as a growing and critical strategic challenge to Europe’s wider critical infrastructure ecosystem and as a core resilience issue for European security. European airports are already actively strengthening their resilience. But airports cannot confront threats of this nature alone and our conventional security rule book and cooperation mechanisms clearly need to be reconsidered.”
