A suspicious bottle of water, a child overheard saying he had a bomb, a telephoned threat, locked lavatory doors.
Since British officials said they foiled a terrorist plot to blow up planes over the Atlantic Ocean, hyper-vigilance aboard U.S. airliners has prompted a rash of emergency landings based on threats that turned out to pose no danger. The incidents suggest that pilots, flight attendants and passengers are ready to err on the side of extreme caution in a period of heightened anxiety in air travel.
With Labor Day travel this weekend and the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks around the corner, security consultants and psychologists said passengers should expect more airline diversions, delays and airport evacuations. The hair-trigger responses to perceived threats are an unavoidable condition of the times, they said.
"If you are looking for suspicious behavior, you are going to notice things and classify them as suspicious that otherwise you wouldn't be paying attention to if you weren't on alert," said David Carbonell, a psychologist in the Chicago area who works with people who are afraid to fly. "We have the whole population of civilian fliers sort of on a war footing, the way we expect soldiers on the front to be in. That is not generally a healthy thing."
‘Taking no chances’
The anxiety began before dawn on Aug. 10, when Transportation Security Administration officials prohibited many common items from carry-on baggage. They banned all liquids and gels -- meaning no more bottles of water, hair gel, lip gloss, toothpaste or gel shoe inserts. Officials said such things could be used to disguise explosives.
At the time, authorities said they had to hurriedly prohibit such substances because British authorities said plotters had planned to blow up transatlantic flights with liquid explosives hidden in sports-drink bottles.
At news conferences, U.S. officials said they enacted the security measures because some plotters could slip through dragnets or copycats might suddenly pop up on a flight.
Three weeks later, the nation's top aviation security official said the threat remains. "This continues to be a very serious threat and we are taking no chances on the security of our aviation system," said Edmund S. "Kip" Hawley, head of the Transportation Security Administration. "It would be a mistake to conclude that because of the arrests in the United Kingdom that we can lower our security posture."
Hawley said he wants travelers to look for suspicious activity.
"Americans are refocusing on what people in the government who work on this every day know: There are terrorists out there who are trying to attack the United States, and many are planning to do it through the aviation system," Hawley said. "A calm, alert traveler is one of our best security assets."
Rash of travel disruptions
In the days after the TSA increased security, more than 10 flights were diverted or searched, and at least one airport was shut down. On Aug. 16, a flight from London to Washington Dulles International Airport made an emergency landing in Boston because an unruly passenger acted up in the cabin. The woman made references to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, told crew members that she had visited Pakistan and urinated on the cabin's floor, according to an FBI affidavit. The woman, who is under evaluation for mental illness, is being held on federal charges of interfering with a flight crew. She had no connection to terrorism, officials have said.
More security incidents followed. A Delta Air Lines jet was searched after a flight attendant became suspicious of a passenger who spent too much time in the restroom and may have tampered with a smoke detector. An American Airlines jet made an emergency landing in Tampa and was searched after the crew found that both lavatories were locked.
An airport in West Virginia was evacuated after a woman's glass water bottle and a container of face cleanser tested positive for explosive residue. The FBI later determined that the woman had no explosives.
The next week, a Northwest Airlines flight returned to Amsterdam shortly after takeoff when an U.S. air marshal became suspicious of 12 passengers who passed around cellphones and ignored orders to keep their seat belts on. The 12 were detained but released by Dutch authorities, who also said there was no connection to terrorism.
Then came a series of emergency landings, searches and diverted flights on Aug. 25.
A plane was extensively inspected after screeners at Houston's international airport found a stick of dynamite in a bag that a student bought in South America. The flight continued to Newark -- without the student or his bags -- and was searched again. An Air Lingus flight from New York to Dublin was evacuated at an airport in western Ireland after a bomb threat was phoned in. And a Continental Airlines flight was diverted to El Paso after the flight crew saw that a lavatory panel was missing. On Monday, a commuter jet was diverted after someone found a threatening note on board the aircraft.
On edge on 9/11 anniversary
The news media covered all the incidents extensively.
Security experts said that they were not surprised by the diversions or the evacuation of the West Virginia airport and that they expect more such incidents. They blamed television coverage of the coming anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and a surge of inexperienced leisure travelers who might be nervous. They also worry about people who call in fake bomb threats so they can watch the chaos they created on television.
"Everybody is going to be watching television about 9/11 and seeing pictures of the buildings and people jumping from them," said Mike Boyd, a security consultant. "More and more, they're going to be thinking that they're no safer than they were, and that is going to make people jumpy."
Boyd and other security experts blamed the public's anxiety partly on the response to the threat by authorities. Because the passenger screening system is geared toward finding illicit items, not on identifying suspicious people, authorities had no choice but to ban all liquids and gels from passenger cabins, several security experts said.
"We've educated the public to be afraid of things," said Bob Hesselbein, an airline pilot and chairman of the Air Line Pilots Association's national security committee. "Let's hope they never find a way to weave explosives into clothing because it's going to be pretty darned embarrassing on an airplane. . . . We are treating everybody as a potential terrorist, and that breeds more fear."