By BRIAN WILLIAMS
Top-class passengers on Finnair now dissect their crayfish with a newly invented wooden knife.
Millions of travellers in China shuffle in bare feet or socks through security checks before boarding planes.
In Britain, a hidden world of sado-masochist equipment such as handcuffs has been uncovered in the hand luggage of the most respectable looking of travellers.
September 11 last year changed airline travel, for the aviation industry and passengers, turning journeys into an expensive security obstacle course.
A year after the tragedy a survey of 31 key countries by Reuters correspondents found while much still needed to be done there has been little let-up in the determination of airlines, airports and governments to head off a new attack.
The cost to air travel has been enormous, with some airlines going bankrupt and nearly all seeing dramatic drops in profit because of fear of flying or the cost of extra security.
Inconvenience to passengers, from long check-in queues to lengthy walks to terminals to the confiscation of hand-luggage, has been dramatic. One to two hours have been added to the time passengers used to arrive at airports and everyone gives pockets an extra pat before going through the x-ray machines.
If there is another thing learned from the suicide-plane attacks on the United States by Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, it is that domestic flights are as vulnerable as international journeys. Most countries now insist on photo identification for domestic as well as international travel.
The search for safe travel is not over.
Peter Harbison, managing director of the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation in Sydney, said new safeguards, such as the biometric scanning of fingerprints or the retinas of the eyes to match passengers and their boarding cards as well as their luggage were being looked at.
Aviation experts give at least passing grades to many new measures but warn there can never be 100 per cent safety. They also want global standards rather than what they see as the piecemeal implementation of them.
Herb Myer, technical director of the International Federation of Airline Pilots Association, says the greatest advance has been awareness among the public and aviation industry of the need to be more security minded.
"It is important everyone plays a part, from the taxi driver who takes you to the airport to the crew, who, once the plane is in the air, are on their own," said Myer, whose association represents 100,000 pilots and flight engineers from all major airlines.
"You can reinforce cockpit doors, arm pilots, have sky marshals, screen everyone and everything but in the end how can you stop a strong man who doesn't care about his life and doesn't need anything except his hands to kill?"
The jury was also still out on reinforced cockpits, with some fearing it could harm personal communications and a long lead time needed for airline manufacturers to make changes.
"The best strategy is to catch terrorists on the ground rather than in the air," said Ken Stevens of the British Air Line Pilots' Association.
There has also been a change in passenger profiling to better identify possible hijackers.
"Earlier we used profiling indicating that an old, grey-haired lady with knitting equipment in her bag, on a domestic flight, was allowed to take that knitting equipment on the plane. But Hells Angels in full leather equipment going to Copenhagen were not allowed to take the same knitting equipment with them," said Jan Lindqvist, chief spokesman at Sweden's biggest airport, Arlanda in Stockholm.
"Now the same rule's applied for all."
Aviation expert Chris Yates of Jane's Transport said that from profiling to equipment to check-in procedures the greatest gap in security was the lack of common international standards.
"A passenger has to feel safe wherever he is," Yates said. "It doesn't matter if it is Kampala, Singapore, Oman or New York."
For some countries such as Israel, which has lived with strict security measures for decades, and Greece, once described as the soft underbelly of airline safety because of its lax security, September 11 coincided with measures already in place or being implemented. Greece has built a new airport for the 2004 Athens Olympics and the US and the European Union praise the security arrangements.
There also have been some side benefits.
In Cairo, there has been a dramatic fall in smuggling because of stepped-up security. In Lagos, passengers no longer worry that their plane will be looted of luggage by gangs which used to strike while the aircraft was on the tarmac.
In Brazil, hoax calls about hijacks have fallen from seven in the year up to September 11 last year to just one since.
In a sign that though the world may no longer see the stratosphere as the friendly skies, an occasional touch of wry humour is entering the debate.
"There has always been a fair amount of puzzlement on the part of our pilots as to why there are armed national guards at airports. To the best of our knowledge, nobody's tried to actually hijack an airport," said Gregg Overman, spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association, which represents 13,500 American Airlines pilots.
- REUTERS
Story archives:
Links: Terror in America - the Sept 11 attacks
Timeline: Major events since the Sept 11 attacks
Airport obstacle course
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