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PARIS: World airports ramped up security Saturday after a botched attempt to blow up a US plane arriving in Detroit from Amsterdam, with the failed terror attack throwing the spotlight back onto flight safety.
Amsterdam-Schiphol airport was also investigating how the 23-year-old Nigerian with reported links to Al-Qaeda could smuggle onboard explosives that he tried to detonate on Christmas Day Friday before being overpowered.
The United States quickly asked airlines worldwide to tighten security and airport authorities said they were complying with extra screening and strict baggage limits that heaped hours onto check-in times.
"The extra measures will apply throughout the world on all flights to the United States for an unlimited duration," the office of the Dutch national coordinator against terrorism (NCTB) said.
"It will involve, for example, frisking passengers and extra checks on hand baggage," NCTB spokeswoman Judith Sluiter told AFP.
The measures came into force on Saturday morning in The Netherlands which received a formal request from the US authorities during the night, she said.
In London a British Airways spokesman said, "The United States government has revised its security arrangements for all passengers travelling into the US.
"This includes additional screening of all US-bound passengers and hand luggage before they board their flights," he said. "Passengers travelling to the US will only be allowed to carry one item of hand luggage."
At Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport passengers were told that all hand baggage had to be checked into the hold, except for women's handbags, one passenger told AFP.
Items required during the flight, such as books, had to be put into special plastic bags and, after normal security checks, passengers were frisked again just before boarding when their remaining hand luggage was reexamined, he said.
Rome announced that all Italian airports had reinforced security checks on every flight to the United States, and Stockholm said more stringent security had also been introduced only for US-bound planes.
In Brussels, authorities said new safety measures for US-headed planes would be reevaluated after December 30. Flights to other destinations had not been affected but vigilance had generally been reinforced, an official said.
Canada announced "immediate action" and warned that the tighter security could lead to delays.
The European Commission in Brussels said it was investigating if proper security measures had been followed in Amsterdam where would-be bomber Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab had boarded the Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit.
"This incident shows once again that vigilance is necessary at all times in the fight against terror," a commission vice president, Jacques Barrot, said in a statement.
Abdulmutallab had been able to pass what is thought to be a new kind of explosive device through checks at Schiphol.
"We are investigating from where he came, through which security barriers he passed and his travel itinerary," the NCTB spokeswoman told AFP.
Since Al-Qaeda's suicide attacks with hijacked airliners on New York and Washington in September 2001 and an attempted "shoe-bombing" on a Christmas week flight a few months later, airline security has been increasing.
In 2003, airlines reinforced cockpit doors to prevent terrorists from taking control of planes and in 2006 many countries introduced strict restrictions on liquids allowed in luggage.
In 2008, the European Parliament authorised the presence of armed air marshals on commercial flights, following the US example.
But experts point out that 100 per cent terrorism-proof airports simply do not exist, as reporters have shown by smuggling weapons and explosives onto flights.
Amsterdam's Schiphol meets all international security standards, a former security director for Northwest Airlines, Douglas Laird, told AFP.
He recommends airports switch from X-rays and metal detectors to full-body scans - although the difference in costs between the two is enormous.
"I hate to say it, but you get what you pay for," Laird said.
Terrorism analyst Peter Bergen said on CNN that the attacker may have chosen a holiday season to strike because it could be easier to dodge detection at this time.
"Attacking during the holiday season is designed to terrorise," he added.
- AFP/yb
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