Ban hand baggage

Sir, - All countries should decide to prevent hand baggage on flight. Except for wallets and keys, people should board planes with the clothes they stand in. Even hampers for babies containing food and change of clothing should be limited. Better still would be to segregate passengers with baby hampers and invalid accessories.

This would need modifying the construction features of the aircraft but would be useful in preventing tragedies. And we can be sure that these will occur again now that the path has been shown by these lunatics.

Past events have shown that hijackers smuggle in arms and explosives inside a plane in hand baggage or in collusion with the ground staff of the airlines. While security set ups can be altered to prevent collusion of the ground staff, it is fairly impossible to thoroughly frisk every passenger, particularly passengers with voluminous hand baggage. Human attitude being what it is, even trained security men tend to lose their alertness over a period of time. This would make the airlines look customer-unfriendly but it is all a matter of getting used to a different situation for the greater good.

One passenger in a million may be the bad egg, but the damage to the psyche he causes, even when he is unsuccessful, is worth avoiding.

S. Venkatraman,

Coimbatore

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