Airline Boss: 'Terrorists Are Laughing in Their Caves'
Via Buzzflash: The head of a British airline has told the government it will sue unless terror restrictions are relaxed within seven days.
TERRORISTS are "rolling around the caves of Pakistan, laughing" at Britain's response to the terror threat, an airline boss said last night as he gave the government a seven-day deadline to relax restrictions or face legal action.
Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary described some of the security measures as "farcical, Keystone Kops-like and completely insane and ineffectual". ... Banning items such as water bottles and toothpaste was "nuts".... He said it was "complete horse manure" to infer that passengers either faced delays or death. Mr O'Leary said the people being subjected to intense security were "not terrorists and not fanatics ... they are actually called holidaymakers". He went on: "The best way to defeat terrorists and extremists is for ordinary people to continue to live their lives as normal.
"We are not in danger of dying at the hands of toiletries. Normal security measures have successfully prevented any terrorist attack on any British plane in the last 25 years."
Some pilots agree.
Pilots also attacked the measures, which ban them from taking toothpaste on to aircraft, and said subjecting flight crews to the same restrictions as passengers made "no sense at all"....Captain Mervyn Granshaw, of the British Airline Pilots Association Balpa)...."Since the extra security measures have been introduced there have been endless practical and frustrating problems for flight crew who have to operate the aircraft," he said.
"Do officials really believe that we need to be prevented from using liquids, given that we freely load and carry many thousands of litres of volatile aviation kerosene every day? The measure is illogical and frankly bizarre."
Ryanair wants the old regulations reinstated.
Ryanair demanded the government return passenger-search requirements to pre-alert levels. It also wants the government to restore the hand-luggage allowance for passengers leaving British airports, and an assurance that military and police personnel would be released to help with airport security checks next time there is a major alert.
The airline's suggested solution:
Delays at airports in the last few days had been "entirely preventable if the government had put in a couple of hundred police or army personnel" to help airport staff.
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