The conspiracy, the maxi-operation, the arrests: why we can't carry liquids above 100ml in the cabin
As of September 1, it's back to the drawing board: containers of liquids, gels and the like exceeding 100 milliliters cannot [...]
LHR
United Kingdom
From September 1 it's back to square one: containers of liquids, gels and the like exceeding 100 milliliters may not be carried in carry-on baggage, but only in the hold one. This, after the European Commission turned around the latest generation Edscb machines used for security screening, deeming them to be unreliable at 100% in detecting explosive substances.
In this article:
ADR's old communications when the new scanners were installed.
In Italy, that kind of equipment is installed at Rome Fiumicino, Milan Malpensa and Milan Linate airports. It is unclear whether existing machines will be able to be 'evolved' so that passengers will again be able to put containers of liquids in excess of 100ml in their hand luggage, and in any case a date or deadline has not been given.
And to think that for decades it had been possible to bring any container of liquid into the cabin, including bottles of alcohol purchased outside the airport. Were you visiting a winery or wine shop in France? You would buy a couple of bottles and then, on your way back to Italy, you would quietly bring them back to the cabin and stow them (carefully) in the overhead compartments.
Did you get your flight cancelled, miss your connection, land late?
You could get up to 600€ compensation per person
Everything has changed since August 2006, when the so-called 'liquid bomb plot' was discovered during an investigation conducted by British police and intelligence.
The operation started when in June 2006, a Pakistani man with British citizenship, who had long been under surveillance for his ties to Al Qaeda, arrived in the United Kingdom from Pakistan. At Heathrow, investigators opened his luggage without his knowledge., finding there a soft drink powder and several batteries.
Suspicious of the finding, they set up in the following weeks. the largest surveillance operation in U.K. history, with some 220 officers involved and dozens of suspicious individuals stalked, filmed and listened to.
One of them, Assad Sarwar, in late July was seen buying products other than what he usually buys while shopping for groceries. And a few days later was filmed disposing of empty bottles of hydrogen peroxide at a waste sorting center. On the same days, Sarwar and the man whose luggage had been opened at Heathrow were seen meeting in a park on the eastern outskirts of London.
At that point, MI5, Her Majesty's internal security secret service, secretly searched the London home of the "man from Heathrow', finding there what appeared to be a bomb factory.
Intelligence men then installed cameras and microphones and August 3, he and an associate were filmed making explosive devices using plastic water bottles. The same 'Heathrow man' was observed a few hours later consulting flight schedules between London and North America at an Internet café.
On August 9, the raid was triggered, in which a total of 24 people were arrested on charges of terrorism and attempted massacre. The plan of the terrorists was to Carry on board one or more aircraft liquid peroxide explosives contained in ordinary water or soft drink bottles 330 or 500 milliliters, and in particular acetone peroxide, which is a heat- and friction-sensitive substance that can be detonated with fire or an electrical charge.
On the morning of August 10, in the U.S. and U.K., a ban on carrying in hand luggage any container of liquid, with the exception of those with breast milk. A ban that within days was adopted by every airport in the world, triggering, of course, chaos and delays at security checkpoints, with hundreds of flights canceled and delayed in just the first two days after its introduction.
It was not until November 2006 that the ban was relaxed somewhat, allowing passengers to carry liquid containers of up to 100 milliliters in the cabin, because that amount of liquid peroxide would not have been sufficient to trigger an explosion.
