These two pieces of evidence — the flight recorder data and the debris field distribution — are the technical foundation for rejecting the shootdown theory. The Czechoslovak Civil Aviation Authority’s response to the theory, and the subsequent statements from other aviation and military experts who examined it, drew on this evidence in concluding that the theory was “media speculation” rather than a credible alternative account.
## Copenhagen and the Security Failure
Whatever the bomb’s ultimate origin in terms of who built and placed it, the operational question of how it got on the aircraft points unavoidably to the Copenhagen stopover. The investigative evidence that has been made public consistently identifies Copenhagen as the most likely point of loading.
The Copenhagen airport security environment in January 1972 was characteristic of European commercial aviation in the early 1970s — an era in which the security screening protocols that are now universal were either absent or rudimentary. The wave of aviation security reforms that transformed how passengers and baggage are processed at airports was still years away in most of its modern form, driven in part by exactly the kind of events that JAT Flight 367 represented.
In 1972, carry-on baggage screening was not the standardized, near-universal practice it became after the 1970s and the series of increasingly sophisticated terrorist attacks on commercial aviation that defined that decade. A passenger with a bag containing a concealed explosive device could, in many airport environments of that era, board an aircraft without the device being detected.
The specific circumstances at Copenhagen Airport on January 26, 1972, were noted by investigators: witnesses had reported noticing unusual behavior by a passenger. What “unusual behavior” meant in the specific context is not detailed in the public accounts that have been accessed. Whether this observation was acted upon at the time, and whether any report was made to flight crew or security personnel before the aircraft departed, is not clear from the available record.