Aviation and Other Threats to National Security

Civil Aviation

Increasing unauthorized arrivals demand a permanent, 24-hour watch. Strategically placing radar surveillance within 100 nautical miles of Trou-aux-Cerfs and key heights in Rodrigues would significantly strengthen national security.

By Paramanund Soobarah

In October 2025, a Cessna Citation carrying high-profile Malagasy figures, including former PM Christian Ntsay and businessman Mamy Ravatomanga, landed irregularly in Mauritius amidst an attempted coup in Madagascar. Lacking prior clearance, the crew used contradictory justifications — ranging from “medical reasons” to “tourism” — before forcing a landing by declaring a fuel emergency. In this article, former Director of Civil Aviation P. Soobarah uses the incident to analyze national security risks. He argues that while the Chicago Convention facilitates emergency landings, Mauritius must prioritize sovereignty and security through strict local enforcement and decisive executive action.

Aircraft Security. Pic – Universal Weather

Press articles about the recent case of the handling of the arrival of an aircraft without prior approval aroused substantial interest in the international rules governing flight across territorial boundaries. These rules are set out in the Chicago Civil Aviation Convention of 1944 and its Annexes. Every country in the world is party to that Convention. Mauritius adhered to it sometime after Independence; prior to that we were party to it under British colonial legislation.

Having spent forty years of my working life actively complying, or overseeing compliance with, those rules, I feel that certain aspects of the process of international regulation of flight across territorial boundaries, including particularly the exceptionally remarkable role of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) in the matter, will be of interest. But in this article, I will only deal with the security aspect of the matter.

Wartime situations have their own logic and in that case the airspace is controlled by the military. The Chicago Convention permits the application of special provisions in times of war and emergency conditions. In Mauritius the Colonial Civil (Aviation Application of Act) Order 1952, in force in the country until 1986, strictly followed the Convention. But our own Civil Aviation Act 1974, in force since 1986, sadly evades the question.

Even in peace time authority for certain types of flight, even by locally-based aircraft can be denied. I recall that I was on duty as Air Traffic Controller on a day of November 1963 at the Control Tower in Plaisance, and a political party was holding a massive protest meeting in Port Louis. They contacted the Tower for permission for some sort of a demonstration flight in connection with their movement using a local aircraft. I referred the request to the Director of Civil Aviation (DCA, then Mr F.H. Menham, then my immediate superior). After a couple of minutes, he told me permission was denied. When I informed the requesting party of the decision, they wanted to know who had denied the permission. All that I was authorised to say was that the decision came from higher authorities. There was some arguing, but I stood my ground.

In normal peacetime, an Air Traffic Controller faced with a landing request from an aircraft with declared fuel emergency has little choice, but due process for ensuring national security must be followed. Two issues need to be considered. The first issue is local in nature and is the possible threat to national security; these days an additional concern is the possibility of drug smuggling. The second issue is adherence to and respect for international law.

Concerned authorities for the first issue are the Police, the Customs Department and others, and for the second, the External Communications Division of the Prime Minister’s Office, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Attorney General, but sitting above them all is the Prime Minister. Usually there isn’t the time for normal consultations through the various levels of the hierarchy, and the fastest channel of communication with the Prime Minister must be used.

Concerning international legislation, the relevant law is Article 5 of the Chicago Convention, whose first sentence is as follows:

Article 5: Right Of Non-Scheduled Flight. Each contracting State agrees that all aircraft of the other contracting States, being aircraft not engaged in scheduled international air services, shall have the right, subject to the observance of the terms of this Convention, to make flights into or in transit non-stop across its territory and to make stops for non-traffic purposes without the necessity of obtaining prior permission, and subject to the right of the State flown over to require landing. (Italics added.)

When the Convention was being drawn up, an important long-held concern of European nations was freedom of marine navigation on the oceans outside of territorial waters. This article was an attempt to introduce a parallel concept in air law, but it has largely failed to achieve that objective. While the sentence from the article quoted can be said to be its core part, it continues further down later as follows:

“Such aircraft, if engaged in the carriage of passengers, cargo, or mail for remuneration or hire on other than scheduled international air services, shall also, subject to the provisions of Article 7, have the privilege of taking on or discharging passengers, cargo, mail, subject to the right of any State where such embarkation or discharge takes place to impose such regulations, conditions or limitations at it may consider desirable.”

If an aircraft arrives without permission, it is not known whether it intends to offload one or more passengers or other traffic. Most nations find refuge in the bits italicized to impose restrictions which lead to the need of obtaining prior permission. (Article 7 concerns cabotage and is not relevant here.)

I recall a discussion in the Transport Commission of an ICAO Assembly Meeting in the seventies where the matter was being discussed, and I was part of the Mauritian delegation. I defended our own stipulation regarding the need for prior permission by saying that we had only a small airport where we could (then) accommodate only three aircraft in our parking area, and so it was necessary for non-scheduled foreign aircraft to make prior arrangements with us for ensuring parking space for them.

Conditions have changed since, but far as we are concerned, the core portion of this article can be ignored; non-scheduled aircraft operators have to abide by the conditions set out in our AIP, which include the need to obtain prior permission. Our AIP (the document providing all necessary information for flights to and from Mauritius and within the Mauritian Flight Information Region) is issued in complete accord with the rules framed under the Convention, and so its terms have to be observed.

A case of a non-scheduled aircraft arrival occurred about 50 years ago, involving a Rhodesian aircraft. I, as Director of Civil Aviation at the time, had liaised through Security Adviser John Rewcastle, as a result of which the SMF had arrived at the airport fully equipped with armoured vehicles and guns. Prior to landing the aircraft was instructed to come to full stop on the runway after its landing run. Thereafter armoured SMF vehicles were positioned on either side and behind the aircraft, and they then accompanied the aircraft to the parking position in front of the Terminal Building. There was no remote parking position in those days. The pilot was instructed to keep its doors and windows closed until the arrival of Security, Police, Immigration, Health, Customs, and Agriculture officials. Further processing was done by them. I cannot recall what explanations the pilot offered, but it turned out to be a totally harmless situation.

Such need not always be the case; besides, serious security problems need not arise just from aircraft arriving without prior permission. The attempted coup in the Seychelles in 1981 involved people who had arrived by a fully authorised Royal Swazi flight. It was thanks to the diligence of a Customs Officer who detected weapons in a false bottom of a suitcase (supposed to be containing toys only) that the plot was uncovered. Following the Customs Officer’s discovery, fighting broke out at the airport, and eventually the mainly South African terrorists hijacked an Air India plane on a technical stop at the airport and forced the pilot to fly them to Durban.

The team aboard the Royal Swazi aircraft, it was subsequently confirmed, had come with firm plans for a regime change and had been preceded by an advance party that had apparently prepared the ground for them. But it is doubtful whether the management of Royal Swazi had any knowledge of the intentions of the terrorists, who had pretended they were members of a beer-drinking club on a mission to distribute toys to children in the Seychelles. It was later confirmed that the attempt had been secretly authorised by South African Prime Minister P.W. Botha and had been actively assisted by Defence Minister Magnus Malan, both being subsequently exposed during Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings. Allegedly deposed Prime Minister Sir James Mancham was also party to the attempt, but he denied all knowledge of it.

It is a matter for consideration whether an action-ready detachment of the SMF should be permanently posted at the airport or not. According to Wikipedia, an article of the Gung Ho magazine of May 1981 titled “Mercenary opportunities west of Suez” had “extolled the benefits and possibilities associated with a mercenary take-over of Seychelles and Mauritius”. All at Seychelles (and Mauritius) had remained blissfully ignorant of the article, and the attempt in Seychelles was actually made a few months later, on 25 November 1981.

Threats to security (and crimes like drug-smuggling) can also occur at the seaport. Furthermore, ships on the ocean lanes can accost the country readily – as happened in the MV Wakashio case. (Could such a ship have approached so close to our coast without the knowledge and express consent of the Prime minister?). With the growth of yachting capabilities, threats can also occur at any point on the coast or on one of our numerous islets around the main Island, and indeed in some or other of the dependent Islands like Rodrigues, Agalega and St. Brandon.

In these days when drones are no longer just toys, they could be launched from a ship in our neighbourhood and land just at any point in the country to deposit their cargo. The watch against criminals has become much tougher. It is time to put the whole country including the dependent islands and our territorial waters under constant radar surveillance and also to impose mandatory death sentence for drug trafficking as is done in Singapore.

Precautions in handling cases of aircraft arriving without prior clearance are therefore absolutely necessary; the procedures employed previously in the Rhodesian aircraft case in Mauritius authenticate the wisdom of our higher authorities. I am not aware of the details of the recent case, but the public display of irritation by the Acting Prime Minister was absolutely appropriate. Until it was determined by the relevant authorities that no security threat existed, the possibility of such a threat — along with the potential for drug smuggling — could not be dismissed, and appropriate preemptive action should have been taken. Such action could only have been ordered by the acting Prime Minister. Allowing the flight to land without taking such protective measures was, in my view, a serious dereliction of duty.

To demonstrate to the nation that compromises with national security are taken seriously, I believe a token high-profile arrest even for just a day should have been made. I am not suggesting that the Air Traffic Controller on duty should have been dragged to jail. He only carries out instructions. Approved standing instructions for dealing with such cases, and the particular instructions given to the Air Traffic Controller on the occasion, will have been examined. Even in the absence of such instructions, a Controller cannot be blamed for issuing a clearance to land to an aircraft with declared fuel or other emergency. But if in the process he fails to alert higher authorities at once, that would be a different matter.

These issues also point to the need for the Control Tower to be keeping a listening watch round the clock. With the frequency of aircraft arrivals and departures these days this is probably already happening. In the early days, in the fifties and sixties, the Tower was not even manned when no aircraft movement was expected. Up to the end of the fifties there used to be only one Air Traffic Controller; in the early sixties, two, and from about the middle of the sixties, three. But even with three Controllers it would not have been possible to keep a permanent watch.

With the increase in traffic after Independence, staff numbers were increased, but I cannot recall if and when strict 24-hour watch was imposed. The traffic situation today is very, very different. While formerly an aircraft in the neighbourhood would only be travelling to or from Plaisance Airport, today aircraft crisscross our region without landing. I understand that ICAO offered the entire oceanic area around the country down to the South Pole as Flight Information Region to Mauritius; this would have been a matter of great pride for the nation. However, the offer was turned down; this could only have been done by, or with the authority of, the Prime Minister at the time.

Flights between Southern Africa and SE Asia (e.g. Singapore) do cross the Mauritian Region, but those between Australia and Southern Africa do not – our Region does not go far enough to the south for that to happen. The reasons for turning the offer down were, apparently, anticipated communications difficulties and Search and Rescue requirements. With satellite communications the entire Indian and Antarctic Oceans are within reach, and with the USAF based in Diego Garcia no point is beyond reach for Search and Rescue purposes. Besides, even with the present situation, SSRIA would still be the nearest port for a diversion in cases of emergency at some stage of the flights between Australia and Southern Africa. I am absolutely certain that Prime Minister Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, under whom I worked closely for ten years, would never have allowed such a thing to happen.

The possibility of an unauthorized arrival has increased, and so also the need for a permanent watch. Keeping a radar watch on traffic within 100 nautical miles of Trou-aux-Cerfs and also of some high point in Rodrigues would be very helpful. No opportunity must be left to evil-doers to harm our country or misguide the youths of our country.

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 16 January 2026