Airport News.

For more airport news, data and analysis, please go to: http://www.airguideonline.com/order_formsubs.htm Aug 14, 2006

Current airport security typically involves a five-layered process of screening checked-in luggage, with multiple X-rays and CT scans. That is too unwieldy and time-consuming to apply to passengers and their hand luggage. Instead travelers pass through a metal detector gateway and their bags through an X-ray machine, with a random sample also checked for explosives residue using trace particle detectors. Aug 11, 2006

Jane's analyst Yates said new technology is becoming available, such as quadrupole resonance scanning developed by Australian-based QR Sciences, which uses radio waves to stimulate certain atoms such as nitrogen, present in explosives. Its scanner, with a traffic-light display to indicate all-clear, further investigation or danger, has already been trialled internationally, including at Manchester Airport. Rolling out such technology universally would require time and a huge reallocation of investment which until now has gone into other areas, such as deployment of sky marshals on planes. In the meantime, Yates said he expected the current restrictions on hand baggage to continue, at least for flights into and out of Britain, possibly for months. A permanent ban on hand luggage would be untenable, not least because of the risk of theft from luggage carousels. But not everyone rules out such radical solutions. Aug 11, 2006

AirGuideSchedules calculated that an estimated 400,000 passengers were impacted in the UK as more than 3,800 flights were scheduled to take off on Thursday, of which 3% were transatlantic. More than 650 flights were planned to depart from London Heathrow. Of these 11%, representing 76 flights and 22,384 seats, were destined for a US airport. Aug 11, 2006