ACI EUROPE Demands Coordinated Answer to Hybrid Airport Threats

ACI EUROPE has published a strategy paper demanding coordinated action across airports, airlines and government authorities against a rising wave of hybrid security threats, including drone incursions, cyberattacks and bomb threats against European flights.

The document, titled the Strategy Paper on Hybrid Threats and Airport Resilience, sets out a framework covering three pillars: airport preparedness, crisis management and operational continuity. It lands amid a wave of bomb threats targeting European flights, some of which have forced diversions and further operational disruption at airports already managing constrained capacity.

What does the paper actually propose?

The trade body, which represents European airports, makes three concrete demands of policymakers and industry partners:

• Faster intelligence sharing between airports, airlines and government authorities;
• Clearer allocation of responsibilities for threat detection and response;
• Dedicated funding streams to support security improvements at airports.

ACI EUROPE frames the first two as structural gaps. The existing security framework divides detection and response duties across multiple actors, and the paper argues this division leaves seams that hybrid threats exploit. The funding call acknowledges that resilience investment currently falls largely on airport operators themselves.

Director General Olivier Jankovec said airports are already investing in cybersecurity and operational resilience but cannot address increasingly complex threats independently. His statement positions the paper as a bid to shift part of the burden from individual operators to a system-wide response.

Why airports are treated as critical infrastructure

A central argument of the strategy is recognition of airports as critical infrastructure. The paper identifies four functions that depend on airport continuity: transportation, economic activity, supply chains and emergency response.

That framing carries regulatory and financial consequences. Critical-infrastructure status typically opens access to national security funding, cross-border protection mechanisms and prioritized government support during crises. It also raises the bar for what authorities can reasonably expect airports to withstand on their own.

The operational cost of inaction

The bomb-threat wave gives the strategy its immediate urgency. Each threat assessment forces a decision: divert, delay or continue. Diversions burn fuel, crew duty time and slot capacity, and cascade into network disruption well beyond the affected flight. For an airport, a single credible threat can close airspace, empty terminals and trigger multi-hour recovery sequences.

Drone incursions pose a separate continuity problem, capable of halting runway operations without warning. Cyberattacks target the operational systems behind check-in, baggage handling and air traffic coordination. The strategy treats these not as isolated risks but as a combined hybrid threat environment requiring unified preparedness.

What changes for European aviation?

For now, nothing formally. The paper is a call to action, not a regulation. Its practical test lies with European and national authorities, whom ACI EUROPE urges to close gaps in existing security frameworks and deepen cooperation across the aviation industry.

Airports, for their part, gain a common reference document for lobbying and for standardizing their own crisis-management and continuity planning. Airlines and handlers gain a clearer statement of what airport operators believe the current system fails to deliver.

The forward question is funding and mandate. If European institutions take up the paper's proposals, airports could see new intelligence-sharing channels and dedicated security budgets. If they do not, the burden — and the cost of every diversion driven by a bomb threat — stays where it sits today: on individual airports and the airlines they serve.