Securitizing Air Spaces: How the Pan Am 103 Bombing Led to a New Extraterritorial Aviation Regime

Abstract

The introduction of security in airspace management presented an interesting problem as the United States inserted itself as the new arbiter of international aviation security. By its very nature, aviation security requires strict policing standards on both ends of travel, at both the departure and arrival airports. This requires unique territorial cooperation between states. But in a world of uneven power, one powerful state with network centrality has the capacity to impose its security demands on the system. How this is created, which I term conceptually as an "extraterritorial aviation regime," is what this dissertation seeks to explain.

Hijackings and bombings of airplanes in the 1970s and 1980s culminated in a significant bombing in 1988: the destruction of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. This event became a critical juncture in the management of airspace. The U.S. state used its desire to impose certain security standards to create a new extraterritorial aviation regime, directly placing U.S. security personnel in the airports of other states, and regulating international air carriers, which were controlled and often owned by other states.

My research argues that the U.S. used its centrality in the aviation network to institute a new regime for the security management of international airspace. But while security was a public motivation for this new regime, aviation deregulation and economics were also drivers behind the U.S. policy change.

Understanding why the new regime was formed in Pan Am's wake helps to understand why the U.S. state became the security standard-maker in international aviation and what led the U.S. to assume control of other states' airports and airplanes under the rubric of U.S. law.