Posted on 12/31/2004 10:16:18 PM PST by wagglebee
FORT WORTH, Texas - (KRT) - In what could become a major hassle for air travelers who smoke, the Homeland Security Department will ban all cigarette lighters beyond airport checkpoints beginning Feb. 15.
The Intelligence Reform Bill that President Bush signed Dec. 17 orders the Transportation Security Administration to review its banned-items list and to prohibit passengers from carrying butane lighters aboard planes. Legislation stipulates that the ban must be in place in 60 days.
"We are reviewing the necessary changes that the Transportation Security Administration will need to make based on the new intelligence legislation," TSA spokeswoman Andrea McCauley said.
The TSA may also expand the banned-items list to include matches, aviation industry sources have said. No decision has been made, according to one TSA official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
But if a ban is enacted, it isn't clear how screeners would detect matches, short of a time-consuming physical search.
In 2003, former TSA head James Loy determined that two lighters and four books of matches were "an acceptable level of risk" to balance security and customer service. But over the next year, Loy's decision was criticized as too lax.
After all, two U.S. senators argued last year, would-be terrorist Richard Reid was one match strike away from igniting explosives in the heel of his shoe aboard a Paris-to-Miami flight.
Other industry observers have said it is disheartening that the TSA and Congress still must tinker with a security problem brought to light in December 2001, rather than focusing on larger issues such as air cargo security or general aviation security.
"You can point to bureaucracy, point to what you like," said David Forbes, president of Colorado-based aviation logistics and government security analysts BoydForbes. "Once you learn a lesson, you apply it. After three years and a huge taxpayers' investment, we have gained virtually zero."
And some question how effectively a ban on lighters, and particularly on matches, could be implemented.
"In some cases it may be difficult to enforce," said David Stempler, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Air Travelers Association. "Many won't show up on X-rays."
Some airports - Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta and Denver, for example - have smoking lounges or areas that could be equipped with lighters similar to car lighters, Stempler said.
But more likely is that airport areas beyond the security checkpoints will become de facto nonsmoking zones, officials said. Some airports, including Dallas/Fort Worth, ban smoking everywhere inside the terminals.
Just another reason not to fly again. It has been said, especially in Europe how stupid we Americans are. This kind of thing certainly gives them reason to say that. When a fox gets in the hen house, doesn't it make more sense to catch the fox rather than flog the surviving chickens continuously...
Whether they realize it or not, incrementally, they are slowly accomplishing this!!!
Of course Manietta is not being asked to resign....and he has faitfully kept the passenger and cargo pilots from being armed...like a good doggie....
re: You fly to a distant city, and have cigarettes in your pocket. Why should you have to buy a lighter?
Simply have everyone put their lighter(s) in a big box before boarding the plane, then the next flight's passengers can take a lighter from the box as they exit the plane.
No, no, no, you simply don't understand national security priorities. We must focus on LIGHTERS first, THEN the borders. Only after our planes are lighter-free will the country be even close to safe from terrorism.
/blistering, scorching sarcasm
Bump to that!
You know, I decided I'd look at the NTSB reports and the only discussions of 'explosive decompression' I could find all had to do with passengers sucked out of a malfunctioning door. Now, maybe I'm cynical, but a door opening on a flight going 600 mph is gonna produce a Venturi effect to the point that unbuckled people, and even loosely buckled folks, will probably be sucked out. But that is NOT depressurization doing the work, which is the big 'explosive decompression' myth.
The only National Airlines accident over the Gulf of Mexico was in 1953, according to the NTSB. And in that accident, a wing FELL OFF.
Next, they will take away all pointy things that we carry in our briefcases and backpacks...
A thousand monkeys sitting at a thousand typewriters could eventually write a best seller in a thousand years.
A million bureaucrats sitting at a million desks couldn't get anything right in a million years.
Let passengers with concealed carry permits carry.
That was my thought as soon as I read the headline. Clothes are next.
That's interesting. I have been an aviation lover since I was four-years-old, and remember that accident vividly. Maybe my mind is playing tricks on me in my old age. I'll look around and see if I can find some reference to it, although if it's figment of my imagination then it's going to be pretty unlikely I'd find any documentation. Thanks for the info!
Shhh, the TSA might be reading this thread and might get some ideas.
lol
I think I'll go into the airline business. I'll name my company Nudist Airlines. Passengers will be subject to full body x-rays prior to boarding. No carry on luggage, matter of fact, no luggage at all
That should take care of everything.
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