By Peter Henderson, Reuters 04/03/03

LOS ANGELES -- Airlines are beginning to offer surgical masks on flights from Asia to passengers who want to protect themselves from Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, the mysterious illness known as SARS, companies said Thursday.

Masks have already cropped up from the streets of Hong Kong to the Pearson airport in Toronto and other cities where the pneumonia-like illness has surfaced, killing dozens worldwide and infecting thousands.

UAL Corp.'s United Airlines began Wednesday night offering masks to passengers departing from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore, spokesman Juan Carlos Cruz said. Passengers can pick up the masks at ticket counters.

Singapore Airlines Ltd. also said Thursday it would start offering masks to passengers and crews on flights from Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Hong Kong, as well as cities in Vietnam and Taiwan, and on April 1 Korean Air Co. began giving them out on southern Asian flights.

Thai Airways International Inc. helped start the trend by offering masks mid-March, and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd. began about a week ago, spokeswoman Mary Jersin-Shammas said, adding, "Many passengers are requesting them."

Airlines, already staggering from the slowdowns in traffic following the Sept. 11, 2001 hijacking attacks and the Iraq war, have been hit again by the spread of SARS, which spilled onto U.S. television screens this week when an American Airlines flight from Tokyo was quarantined due to a SARS scare that turned out to be a false alarm.

American, which only serves Tokyo in Asia directly from North America, keeps masks in medical kits but does not offer them routinely to passengers, a spokeswoman said.

HEALTHY DON'T NEED MASKS -- OFFICIALS

In fact, officials studying the new illness do not recommend all passengers on international flights wear masks.

"We don't think it would be helpful at all. Why? Because one; it's not very feasible, two; it would alarm people to a great extent, beyond what is reasonable for the danger associated with this disease," said Dr. Max Hardiman of the World Health Organization at a March 27 news conference.

WHO doctors said the best course was to give a mask to sick passengers, who might be able to infect those in close contact, or within a couple of rows on an airplane.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control also has recommended against passengers routinely wearing masks, counseling aircraft personnel to give masks to sick passengers instead.

Citing those policies, Air Canada spokessman John Reber said his airline, which serves Hong Kong and other Asian destinations, did not offer masks routinely but kept them in its in-flight medical kits.

Major Chinese airline China Southern Airlines Co Ltd is not offering masks, and neither is U.S. carrier Northwest Airlines Corp..

Jersin-Shammas, of Cathay Pacific, which offers masks, said the cool, dry climate of planes and industrial-strength air filters slowed the spread of illness on board.