The New York Times is reporting that Kafeel Ahmed — the man named by British Police as the driver of the Jeep Cherokee loaded with gasoline canisters and driven into the Glasgow Airport — worked as an aeronautical engineer until July 2006. 

BANGALORE, India, July 9 — Kafeel Ahmed, the engineer identified by police as one of the two main suspects in the British car-bomb plot, worked for much of last year as an aeronautical engineer for an Indian outsourcing company that designs aircraft parts for Boeing, Airbus and other manufacturers.

Mr. Ahmed worked in the Bangalore office of the company, Infotech Enterprises, between December 2005 and July 2006, K. S. Susindar, a company spokesman, said in a telephone interview today. Mr. Susindar offered that information after checking an employee database that listed Mr. Ahmed as having degrees from universities in India and Northern Ireland; he had a master’s in aeronautical engineering. The company, which employs 5,500 people, did not say exactly which aviation projects Mr. Ahmed worked on.

And while it remains unclear as to which aviation projects the terror suspect actually worked on, the Associated Press raises important questions about the serious security concerns inherent to some of those possibilities:

The services Infotech offered its clients was not immediately clear, but most of the aviation work outsourced to Indian companies includes software support for cabin lighting, display of information in the cockpit, in-flight entertainment and communication.

In some cases, it could involve designing software for flight control systems, navigation and surveillance.

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