Airlines will allow more sharp tools

WASHINGTON -- Airline passengers soon will be allowed to carry small scissors and some sharp tools onto planes, but there will be a trade-off: the prospect of more-thorough pat-downs and other extra security checks before they get to the gate.

The changes announced yesterday by Kip Hawley, transportation security administration chief, are aimed at catching terrorists carrying explosives, which the agency considers a greater threat than dangerous objects smuggled into an airplane cabin.

Flight attendants and relatives of some Sept. 11 attack victims opposed the change, saying it will make airliners more vulnerable to terrorism.

''They're just inviting trouble," said Marcus Flagg, a cargo pilot whose parents died in the plane that crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

Airlines and airports generally support the plan, as does the largest pilots' union.

Hawley said screeners, recently renamed ''transportation security officers," spend too much time looking for objects that don't pose much of a risk, slowing security lines.

But officials at the Massachusetts Port Authority, which runs Logan International Airport, also chided the move.

In a recent interview before the TSA made the change final, Thomas J. Kinton Jr., aviation director at the Massachusetts Port Authority, said: ''That's bad. It's a slippery slope. It's not good security to go back and start making exceptions and confuse the whole issue."

Referring to the current list of banned items, Kinton said, ''For the most part, the traveling public understands it, accepts it, and knows it's good security."

Kinton also disputed the idea that relaxing restrictions on small items that can be taken on planes would free up security screeners to focus on bigger threats. ''I don't buy that. Our security checkpoints run well here," Kinton said. Massport owns and operates Logan International Airport in Boston.

Since the TSA took over airport screening on Nov. 19, 2002, the agency has confiscated more than 30 million prohibited items from carry-on bags.

Hawley said that about one-fourth of those were small scissors and tools, which will be taken off the list Dec. 22.

As part of the effort to focus on bombs, Hawley said more than 18,000 screeners have received enhanced explosives-detection training. .

Other changes are aimed at making security checks less predictable for terrorists.