On January 1, 2023 the Swiss Federal Office for Aviation Security adopted new regulations, which impacted the export procedures from Switzerland via airfreight. To make a long story short, as of last year, any goods leaving Switzerland via airfreight must be part of a secured chain. This includes fine art and cultural items.
A secured chain is guaranteed when the goods originate from a Known Consignor (e.g. museum), and are then collected and transported to the airport by a Regulated Agent (e.g. fine art shipping company). To be accredited as Known Consignor or Regulated Agent, companies have to attend specific courses, pass a test and prove that their facilities respect certain security standards.
Initially, the implementation of this new regulation had caused a great deal of confusion amongst Swiss registrars. Not only many of us found out about it only after it came into force, but the official regulation text did not provide any practical information on how to implement the secured chain on a daily basis. At this point, most Swiss museums and other cultural institutions were also not accredited as Known Consignors. So how exactly were we supposed to export works of art in the future?
FURTHER READINGS ABOUT AVIATION SECURITY REGULATIONS |
Known Consignor and Regulated Agent: Official Definitions How to be accredited as Known Consignor Newsletter of the Swiss Federal Office for Aviation Security Annexes to the Convention on International Aviation Security (see Annex 17, in particular) Regulation 300/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 2008 on Common Rules in the Field of Civil Aviation Security and Repealing Regulation (see Annex A, in particular) |
Thankfully, intensive communication with our fine art shippers and some practice with outgoing loans quickly taught us the available options, which would soon become standard procedures. Basically, fine art shippers who are accredited as Regulated Agents will need to guarantee that the goods they collect from museums, which are not (yet) accredited as Known Consignors, are safe and free from any hazard for the flight. To do this they have the following options.
HAND-SEARCH
This option is ideal for the export of single or very few crates. The chosen Regulated Agent will send a specially trained employee to your museum or gallery. Let’s call him our Inspector. Here s/he will thoroughly inspect the packaging and the artwork to ensure it does not contain any explosive or other dangerous particles, which could put the flight at risk.
To facilitate the procedure, make sure to have the crate ready and open, when the Inspector arrives. A packing table to inspect the artwork and a pallet trolley to lift the crate, if particularly large, would also be useful.
Once the inspection is completed, the Inspector will supervise the packing of the artwork into the crate. Then he will apply a seal, load the crate onto his truck and deliver it directly to the airport or the Regulated Agent’s facility for an overnight stay, if the flight timetable doesn’t allow for direct delivery to the airport.
For the Inspector’s time on-site, the Regulated Agent will charge an hourly fee. Therefore, I recommend using the hand-search procedure only for the export of individual items. In fact, having an Inspector on-site to supervise dozens of crates/works at the end of an exhibition, for example, would significantly affect the exhibition budget and slow down the dismantling process.
DETECTION DOGS
This option is particularly efficient for the export of large numbers of crates, for example when returning loans via airfreight at the end of an exhibition.
In this case, the museum or gallery is going to dismantle the exhibition and crate the artworks as usual. The Regulated Agent will then collect the crates, seal the entire truck and deliver to the airport (or the Regulated Agent’s facility for an overnight stay, if the flight timetable doesn’t allow a direct delivery).
At the airport, a specialized company will slightly open the truck and aspire some air with a little vacuum. This air sample is going to be presented to a specially trained Detection Dog amongst other clean air samples. If there is any explosive material hidden in one of the crates in the truck, the dog will detect it. Should this happen, the crates will need to be opened to verify their content, or, if possible, the truck will return to the Regulated Agent’s facility for opening and inspection.
Please note that for the Detection Dog Test to be effective, the crates must be locked into the truck for at least 2 hours prior to vacuuming. At the airport you should allocate at least 1.5-2 hours waiting and execution time for this test.
As far as I know, Detection Dogs are not yet available at every Swiss airport. As of May 2023, you can find them at the EuroAirport in Basel (both on the Swiss and French side) and I believe in Frankfurt a.M. too, but not at the airport in Zurich.
The company DiagNose, which supplies Detection Dogs worldwide, has prepared a very informative video to show you how the procedure works. You can watch it here.
SCAN
The last available option is the old X-rays scan at the airport itself. This looks and works exactly like the scanners we all know from the security checks for passenger’s bags.
However, I don’t particularly recommend this option for two reasons. First of all, scanners can currently only scan small to middle-sized crates. This makes it unsuitable for oversized artworks.
Secondly, particularly if your crate contains metal or other unusual mixed media, there is a good chance that the scanner will not be able to identify these materials, leading to a so-called “dark alarm” and consequent opening of the crate by airport employees, who are not trained in handling fine arts and cultural goods.
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