I thought I’d wait to write this article on travel security, specifically the air travel segment since there was so much erroneous and outrageous response to the recent aircraft collision between the US Army Helicopter and a commuter aircraft in Washington, DC on social media in the EP industry.
Whether you are flying, driving, or even taking a train with your client there is only so much you can control and plan for. But there are things you can do that will help you have a fighting chance of survival for you and your client.
Motor Vehicles
The greatest risk to your client is when they are traveling in a motor vehicle, most incidents occur around arrivals and departures where incidents can happen as you’re exposed between one secure location and the next. Your client has a greater chance of injury during a motor vehicle accident than being attacked by an assailant. We spend more time moving in motor vehicles as a regular habit and part of our day. How many of us look at the prospect of what we’ll do in the event of our vehicle and our client being involved in an injury-related auto accident?
Then what? What do you need to know?
Are you allowed to accompany your client into the ER? What happens if you are also injured, who do you notify if you’re able to do so?
- What is your protocol for protecting your client’s privacy, and dignity at the scene where they may be removed from the vehicle on a stretcher or have their clothes partially cut away to administer medical aid?
- Are you trained to render aid until medical resources are dispatched to your location? Do you have a trauma kit that travels with you and the client? Do you know what is in it?
- What is your protocol for this event, what trauma level one hospital is closest? What local hospitals does your client have a relationship and doctors at?
- What known medical conditions does your client have? Medications?
- Do you know if your primary hospital will admit your client under a pseudonym or keep their names confidential from any press inquiries while in the hospital? Will they keep outside callers from reaching their hospital room and protect the clients’ room numbers from the public? How will I post their hospital room for security purposes?
- Who is responsible for staying/responding at the scene to talk to the police and recover any of the clients’ personal effects, or confidential items they carry and may have lost in the vehicle during the accident?
All these questions will be case-by-case situations depending on where (home local area for client) or in a different geographical area on travel. However, a basic understanding and advance planning should be in place before you are in an incident.
Clients and Personal Vehicles
I had a client who was involved in a non-injury accident that damaged their personal vehicle as we followed them to work. (They insisted on driving their own car and having the security element follow them.) The accident disabled their car, which had to be towed from the scene. The principal was quickly assessed at the scene by our EP agents, and placed into the following vehicle out of traffic, and for his privacy.
The EP director was notified, The EP agents secured their client’s Driver’s license and registration, interfacing with the local police and another vehicle driver. The EP agents already knowing the place the client had their vehicle maintenance done, called for a tow vehicle and had the vehicle towed to the shop. Once the client was released by local authorities, and no injuries to the client were verified on scene the client was transported to their intended destination by EP.
An incident report was completed to document the actions taken on scene by the EP agents, what treatment if any was done, and general observations about the client’s physical, mental, and emotional assessment. Where the vehicle was towed, and photographs of the client’s car were taken by EP to document the scene. EP knew what hospital the client would go to if necessary and how to contact the client’s physician. We had an arrangement with the local hospital to protect our client’s privacy and for being admitted to the hospital. No one was injured in the accident and nothing more came of the incident. By putting our client into the following vehicle, our client was protected from being photographed at the scene by outside onlookers who inevitably show up to see what is going on with the police present.
Advances for Travel
When our team does our advances for travel, we identify the local level one trauma hospital (or highest-level treatment hospital) and determine what their policies will be if our client must be taken to the hospital. Can we accompany them into the ER and liaison with medical staff during treatment? Can we arrange for their presence, identity, and room number to remain confidential? Is there a UHNW/Celebrity liaison staff member at the hospital and their number for coordination? We found many places do have someone assigned to make these types of arrangements for your client whether it’s a security staff member or a dedicated hospital person depending on the hospital.
Other considerations for your advance team to consider for your armed teams are hospital emergency room entrances.
Most US hospitals’ ER entrances are manned by security officers operating metal detectors and /or X-ray machines. By doing your due diligence and liaison with the hospital staff and security department you can avoid an incident where you are unnecessarily detained or delayed due to your armed team members having to negotiate security and metal detectors for the first time during an emergency.
If the closest hospital you have access to is less than a level one trauma center, do they have a heliport for transfer to a level one trauma center and where will that transport take your client? Where is that Level One trauma center located, how far?
For non-urgent medical care beyond your medical scope of practice, we also inquire as to whether the local hotel we are staying at has an on-call physician who can be summoned to address and prescribe medications for illnesses contracted during your visit that don’t require an ER or hospital visit.
The aftermath of a car accident with injuries will be chaotic, airbags will deploy, and unsecured items will fly, including your cell phone. You will likely incur some sort of injury from airbags (especially if you’re driving, or front right passenger), possibly flying glass, or impact-related body trauma. So may your client. Having a plan and doing some tabletop or dry run practices for validating an SOP is crucial to working through an incident before it happens.
Air Travel
All of us will at some point travel with a client on either a corporate jet or a commercial airliner. After seeing the social media responses by some people to what should be done, or how their people are instructed to operate on an aircraft I wanted to address this subject. A lot of good folks in the industry have made similar observations but I wanted to dive into the subject a little more.
My client utilizes a corporate jet most of the time in their travels with some exceptions. One of the things I came to understand early on in my experiences with our pilots and contract jet company was they have their own SOPs and resources that can help you in certain emergencies you could experience on the plane or in flight.
The questions I asked my pilots about what resources they had at their disposal initially surprised me but made sense and changed my approach to some of my air travel planning.
Does your pilots and airplane provider company do crisis management planning and tabletop exercises?
If so, you might want to see if you can join in or observe them to see how they plan on handling things like a crash, disabled aircraft on the ground, unscheduled stop due to mechanical issues, in-flight medical emergencies, and how to use the emergency escape exits on the plane as well as under what circumstances will you use them.
I learned that our aircraft provider has a medical hotline they can call while in flight and talk directly to a contracted emergency doctor on the ground. I also learned that the aircraft (and many other private providers) have a more advanced medical kit on board that contains some controlled medications that can be accessed during a medical emergency while under the care of the medical authority on the ground. Using and breaking the seals of this kit requires crew documentation and justification after the incident.
Also, the presence of an AED that is aircraft friendly and where is it located. I also learned that medical care and the utilization of emergency doctors would be my responsibility as pilots would need to operate the aircraft for landing. One of the questions we had to answer was who are we notifying on the ground of our emergency from our company? How will we rally ground assets for assistance for our clients prior to our arrival to facilitate our transportation with the ambulance or to a hospital? We found we could use our GSOC as a dispatcher for corporate messages and responding to company resources. We found that the primary contract security company we use for hiring drivers and additional EP personnel has a GSOC we can reach out to and scramble assets to most locations where we would need them.
Other questions we asked were what are our plans if our aircraft experiences a mechanical failure and is forced to land in another location other than the intended destination? Is there another corporate plane available and if so, how long will it take to respond? Are we now flying commercial, and if so from what airport? Can I get local assets to support my transportation or am I suddenly renting a car and driving my client from the FBO Airport to a commercial airport? For armed teams who fly with their clients, you also must consider the issue of now checking your firearms for a commercial flight, did you bring a TSA-compliant firearms box to transport your firearm? Does your luggage have a lock to be in compliance with the transportation of the firearm?
These are problems you don’t want to be working through during an emergency, preplanning and talking these problems through with your team, pilots and company Crisis management leaders is a good start. Finding out what your resources and options are before you need them is critical. Have an SOP or a template you can use in the event you experience a problem so you’re not flying by the seat of your pants any more than you will in the moment.
Flying Commercial
If you’re flying commercial, most of the time I’ve found myself flying in a different class of cabin than my principal. Know where they are sitting in relation to your seat. Instruct them on what to do in the event of an emergency evacuation, and that you’ll attempt to reach them to come and assist them in response. But if it’s a true evacuation to deplane with the instructions of the crew. During a normal deboarding of the aircraft, they will more than likely exit the aircraft ahead of you, ask them to wait for you after exiting the aircraft near the gate check-in point.
Commercial aircraft have very similar medical kits, AEDs, and oxygen for emergencies. Most airlines will have the same arrangement with a medical doctor on call via aircraft communications to aid in in-flight emergencies. Your flight will be manned by trained flight attendants who know the medical procedures and where these items are stored. I carry a basic trauma kit with me, along with basic comfort OTC medications like Imodium, Tylenol, cold medicine, Benadryl for allergic reactions, and aspirin for heart attacks. TSA doesn’t like the standard emergency shears, so I carry a TSA-compliant Variant One HUK which will cut off clothes, seat belts, and tape. It’s the size of a credit card and has a curved blunt end blade. I carry extra flashlights, light sticks, zip ties, and a cellphone battery charger for emergencies.
I generally will strike up a conversation with one of my flight attendants when flying to ask what I can expect for resources during an emergency on their aircraft.
Most aircraft offer complimentary WIFI communications /messaging services on the aircraft which will work with WhatsApp, Messenger, iMessage, or Signal you can use for emergency or routine communications with your support team on the ground to coordinate your travel or emergencies.
I’m not even going pretend to try and address emergency evacuations from a commercial aircraft, you and your clients are going to be scrambling to an exit as are most of the aircraft passengers. Even with your best intents and training chaos is going to ensue. Advising them to find a rallying point where you can find them in the chaos will be helpful. If they get separated on the ground or a water evacuation where you either don’t show up or can’t get to them, tell them who they should call in your company or team to update their location for emergency response.
Give your client a colored light stick before the flight, they can activate in the crowd so you can locate them. It’ll also give rescue operators additional visual points to find them. I was just watching the aftermath of the commuter aircraft which crashed landed and flipped upside down in Canada.
If you have ever experienced a rollover simulator in training, now not only are you hanging upside down suspended by the lap belt (hopefully not flying around the cabin) but the seat belt latch will need to have the weight of your body off the belt to release it. (Not to mention the disorientation of being rolled over upside down.) This means you may need to have someone help you or be able to push yourself up off the ceiling to release the belt latch if you can even reach the ceiling. Just something to think about, not something any of us train for every day.
Final Thoughts on Travel Security
We are all human and will have varied levels of physical and mental abilities to react during a crisis. Things like knowing how the aircraft doors operate and where the closest emergency exits are for you and your clients is a good beginning. Doing some planning, training, tabletop or mental rehearsals will help you further. As I found out in the aftermath of an injury accident I was involved in last year, expect to self-rescue, no one is coming to save you.