Passengers can expect double screening - Yahoo! News

WASHINGTON - Beginning Friday, airline passengers will go through double screening to make sure they're not carrying liquids onto planes, the head of the airline industry's largest trade group said.

 

 

Passengers and their carry-on luggage will be checked not only at the main security checkpoint, but also a second time at the boarding gate. The stepped-up screening in response to a new terrorist threat began Thursday at 25 airports where planes leave for Britain.

 

 

"It's going to spread across the whole system tomorrow," James May, president of the Air Transport Association, said Thursday.

 

 

The response to the terrorist threat produced long lines at airports Thursday as security officials scrambled to put new measures in place and passengers faced perplexing new restrictions — including the ban on carrying liquids onto aircraft.

 

 

Intelligence had indicated the terror plot unfolding in Britain involved using benign liquids that could be mixed inside an airplane cabin to make an explosive.

 

 

While plots to blow up airliners using liquid explosives are nothing new — such an attempt was foiled more than a decade ago — the government has been slow to upgrade its security equipment at airport checkpoints so that it can detect explosives on passengers.

 

 

Transportation Security Administration chief Kip Hawley said the need to tighten security came as a surprise and the changes were difficult to implement.

 

 

"It normally takes us about four weeks to roll out a change at a security checkpoint, and this one came about in a little bit more than four hours in the middle of last night," Hawley said.