Toilet ban needs tact

[CatoCooper13]

A US demand for airline passengers to be banned from queuing for the toilet would need to be handled sensibly by Qantas, Acting Prime Minister John Anderson said.

The Sydney Morning Herald said Qantas had confirmed it had received a directive from the US Transport and Security Administration that passengers not be permitted to congregate in groups on board international flights.

The security directive includes a ban on passengers queuing to use toilet facilities.

Mr Anderson said the directive seemed a bit hard to handle, but he was sure Qantas would handle it tactfully.

"I guess what the US authorities are looking for is any kind of suspicious congregation of behaviour that might be in some way in related to, you know, preparing for something nasty to launch an attack on a plane or something like that," he told Sky News.


"This is going to require a bit of commonsense and a bit of tact.

"I wouldn't want to overreact, but I'd have to say as the reports at the moment I have to say do sound a little bit hard to handle.

"And certainly I think that Qantas will handle it well, to give them their due."

Mr Anderson said he was not concerned by a report that almost a third of foreign cargo ships entered and left Australia without passport checks being carried out by Customs authorities.

He said security procedures were already in place to deal with visiting ships and these would be strengthened when new security rules came into force.

"These arrangements will all be tightened as part of the new maritime security plans that we're putting in place," he said.



©AAP 2003