# Air India officials skipped bomb search of Flight 182 - newspaper article



## Greymatters (17 May 2007)

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings Act...

http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/story.html?id=60f68502-3328-4159-9861-47742c0ee26c
*Cost-conscious Air India officials skipped bomb search of Flight 182*
Doomed jet took off despite discovery of suspicious bags
Kim Bolan, CanWest News Service
Published: Thursday, May 17, 2007
Air India officials were worried about extra costs when they sent Flight 182 to its doom on June 22, 1985, before it could be searched by a bomb dog.  The Air India inquiry heard yesterday that the airline was ultimately responsible for security shortfalls in Toronto and Montreal in the hours before the flight was brought down by a terrorist's bomb, killing all 329 aboard.  Former security guard Daniel Lalonde told inquiry head John Major that he overheard an Air India official at Mirabel airport stressing how expensive it would be to delay the flight, despite the discovery of three suspicious bags.  Lalonde, now an Ontario Provincial Police sergeant, was then an 18-year-old working for Burns Security.  He overheard an airline representative named "John," a large man in a fez, discussing the cost concerns with another person nearby.  "I don't recall the words, but I recall it had to do with time and money and how much it cost for a plane to be kept on the ground," Lalonde testified.  Lalonde's testimony, after a series of inquiry revelations about missed opportunities to prevent the terrorism plot, was almost too much for Usha Sharma, who lost her mother, sister and two nieces.  "It looks like human lives are nothing compared to the money. That's why they flew the plane," Sharma said after visiting the Ottawa inquiry yesterday.  Lalonde agreed that the Air India official he spoke to back in June 1985 was likely John Leo D'Souza, Air India's security chief.  D'Souza, who is now dead, was interviewed by police after the bombing.  In that interview, which was entered as an exhibit yesterday, he blames another Air India official, Jainul Abid, for letting the plane take off after the suspicious bags were found.  "To my opinion his mind was already made up not to search the plane at Mirabel airport and not to delay any further the flight schedule of Air India 182, since it was already delayed by 1.5 hours and no one to my knowledge took the initiative to recall the Air India 182 flight for security purposes," said D'Souza.  He said that he could have recalled the flight back to the airport, but that "in my mind, there never was any doubt which would justify such an action regarding AI 182 on the 85-6-23."  None of the statements given to police in the days after the bombing make reference to cost being the reason the plane was not held back.  D'Souza said that despite the heightened security concerns throughout June 1985, "I had no suspicions that there could be anything harmful on Air India 182, either to the aircraft crew or passengers."  A bomb-laden suitcase from Vancouver had been loaded onto the Boeing 747 at Pearson International after Air India's X-ray machine had broken down and was replaced by an ineffective hand-held "PD-4 sniffer." The RCMP had told Air India five months earlier that the device did not work.

_Note - In the past, the RCMP and Canadian airport security were usually held at fault for the security failure attached to this flight.  This testimony appears to place the responsibility squarely on the Air India staff. _


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