Ryanair tells airports to drop security restrictions

RYANAIR boss Michael O’Leary said yesterday the severe restriction imposed on airline passengers by the British Government was “handing extremists an enormous PR victory”.

Ryanair chief executive Mr O’Leary said: “The best way to defeat terrorists and extremists is for ordinary people to continue to live their lives as normal. Because of the additional security restrictions imposed by the Government last Thursday, the shambles at the London airports has been anything but normal.

“The UK Government successfully led the return to normality of the London Underground within two days of the July 7 terrorist attacks. It is important that they now restore security at the London airports to normality and remove some of these nonsensical, and (from a security perspective) totally ineffective restrictions which were introduced last week.

“If they don’t, and if they allow these restrictions to stay in place, then the British government will have handed the extremists an enormous PR victory.”

Ryanair said the measures it was asking for involve:

*Restoring the hand luggage allowance for passengers leaving British airports to the normal IATA dimensions of a small, wheeled case, which is just 20% larger than the current restriction of a “large briefcase” dimension.

n Returning the passenger body searches from the current one-in-two to the normal one-in-four, which still allows any suspect passengers to be individually body-searched. This will reduce the pressure on security staff as well as eliminating the queues and delay, the airline said.

*Ryanair has also asked for the British Transport Secretary’s assurance that the next time the government quadruples the number of individual body searches, it will send in police and army reserve personnel to help carry out these searches.

“This will at least allow the increased security to be carried out, in an emergency, without the disruptions, delays and cancellations that have characterised the chaos at London airports over the past week,” the airline said.

“The extraordinary efforts of these people are not sustainable and the only way to prove to the terrorists that they cannot disrupt British life is to return the airport security requirements to their safe pre-August 10 levels.”

Virgin Atlantic Airways spokesman Paul Charles said yesterday that Virgin was in discussion with airport operator BAA about possible compensation.

Mr O’Leary said banning items such as water bottles and toothpaste was “nuts” and the terrorists “must be rolling around the caves of Pakistan laughing”.

“There are two ways to defeat terrorists — arrest the bloody terrorists, and keep the airports operating normally,” he said.

“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 past 25 years.”