Sunday, May 30, 2010

Ban on Flying With Liquids Stays to 2013 - But EU Moves to Exempt Airports With Screening

Because of the principles and procedures of comitology which apply to the EU's law-making, the law could have been repealed by the Parliament's Committee on Transport when it met in January. But it chose instead at that meeting not to oppose it, leaving the way open for the ban to stay in place beyond its originally imposed deadline.

The main reason for the ban remaining in place is that screening technology which is able to detect liquid explosives in all checked-in luggage, which had been expected to be ready in time for the ban to be lifted this year, has not yet come on stream.

But now a deadline of 29 April 2013 has been set for all airports within the EU to have the equipment installed. So at that time, the ban on air passengers carrying drinks and a range of other personal items such as toothpaste, shaving cream and perfume in their hand luggage, will be lifted.

A transitional amendment to the regulations, allowing liquids bought at airports in non-EU countries, or conveyed in aircraft from outside the Union, has been pencilled in for introduction from April 2011. But there will be conditions applying to this exemption. The low quantity of permitted liquid is intended to deter would-be terrorists from smuggling liquids in sufficient quantity that could be combined to create an explosive mixture.

When introduced, the new machines would be able to scan liquids and tell in seconds whether they are potentially dangerous or explosive. These plans remain in place in addition to those announced to bring in body scanners at airports, after a Nigerian man tried to blow up a jet over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009.

As part of the easing of restrictions on carrying liquids onto a flight, the EU first plans to target passengers flying on connecting flights through Europe. Currently, quantities of more than 100ml of liquid which have been carried on a previous flight or bought at an airport are confiscated from passengers passing through EU airports.

This rule has been the subject of large numbers of complaints, but an EU official has said that this demonstrates the importance of targeting such passengers. Technology for scanning liquids is expected to be widely available by 2013, when we will have to get used to having all our drinks and perfumes scanned before we board our flights.

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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Carlos_Sintan

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