The Taoyuan International Airport Corp (TIAC) said yesterday that it completed the installation of a new surveillance system last year in the nation’s largest airport, employing several state-of-the-art facilities used by the US military.
The airport began to step up its efforts to enhance airport security following an incident in 2011, when a woman intruded onto the airport’s restricted area by climbing over the perimeter wall that encircles the airport.
After entering the airport’s restricted zone, the woman drove onto the taxiway a ladder truck used by ground crew and eventually succeeded in boarding a China Airlines plane.
Photo: Yao Chieh-hsiu, Taipei Times
Several managers received demerits or warnings over the incident, including former TIAC president Samuel Lin (林鵬良).
The airport company’s director of operational safety Chen Chi-chia (陳志嘉) said the west side of the airport by the Pusin River (埔心溪) is now equipped with the same radar system that is used by the US military.
“The wall near the river is often damaged by typhoons, so the radar system is mainly used to protect the west side,” Chen said.
The airport company also purchased two thermographic cameras and installed them on the southern and northern boarding corridors, allowing the company to capture the images of objects 3km away.
Thermographic cameras will help identify an object once it appears in the radar system, Chen said.
“We need to make sure if the object is a stray animal or a person, because this will determine whether we should contact the Aviation Police Bureau or elevate the security level at the airport,” he said, adding that both the radar system and thermographic cameras had assisted the US military in desert-based combat operations.
According to the TIAC, the new radar system would enable it to target and track up to 350 objects at a time, unhindered by topography and weather.
The airport company said that it plans to install the intrusion detection system and surveillance cameras along 20km of the airport’s perimeter walls.
Aside from the installation of these new facilities, the airport company says it has also replaced old surveillance cameras and integrated different operating systems. It would also start building the second perimeter walls around the airport, which is scheduled to be completed by the end of next year.
The entire project is expected to cost about NT$200 million (US$6.54 million), the TIAC said.
In other news, the Airports Council International (ACI) has chosen Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport to be in this year’s Airport Service Roll of Excellence, according to the TIAC.
The airport company said it is scheduled to be recognized for such a honor at the ACI Asia-Pacific Regional Assembly in Seoul on May 26.
Aside from Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, those listed in the roll of excellence include Cairo International Airport in Egypt, Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay, Jamaica, Dubai International Airport in the United Arab Emirates, Keflavik International Airport in Iceland and Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in Hyderabad, India.
In order to be qualified for the roll of excellence, an airport has to reach the top five in its region or in terms of airport passenger volume in the council’s evaluations of airport services for five years consecutively.
Prior to its achievement this year, the nation’s largest airport was ranked No. 3 in terms of services last year among airports that have annual passenger volumes of between 25 million and 40 million.
Twenty-one airports around the world have been recognized in the roll of excellence since the ACI created the annual awards in 2011. They included Incheon International Airport in South Korea, Changi International Airport in Singapore, Shanghai Pudong International Airport and Beijing Capital International Airport in China, as well as Zurich Airport in Switzerland.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater