The Bush administration is considering forcing foreign airlines to check against government surveillance lists the names of all passengers on flights that go through United States airspace, officials revealed on Thursday night.
At the moment, a requirement to check through-passenger lists is only in place for foreign flights that land at US airports; only crew lists are currently scrutinised for foreign flights that go through US airspace and land elsewhere.
The US Transportation Security Administration said on Thursday, however, that it is considering requiring all flights through US airspace to provide passenger lists as well as crew lists as a further counter-terrorism precaution.
About 500 foreign flights pass through US airspace every day, and the new proposal would mostly affect airlines in Mexico and Canada. At least one firm, Aeroméxico, appeared to be unhappy with the proposals and said it would consider violating international transit agreements.
But a spokesperson for British Airways, John Lampl, said the airline flies across the US on only a few flights, to Mexico and the Caribbean, and checking passengers against the lists would be ”very routine and should not be a problem”.
The current system on foreign flights that are bound to land in the US is that a crew and passenger list must be submitted to the US government within 15 minutes of takeoff. The names are checked against lists of people considered to be terrorists, or who might pose a threat.
The toughening of the system follows an incident on April 8 when US authorities denied a KLM Amsterdam-to-Mexico flight the right to fly into US airspace. The action came after US officials learned that two Saudi passengers were on the government’s ”no-fly” list of known or suspected terrorists.
The pair had allegedly studied at the same flight school in Arizona as one of the hijackers involved in the September 11 2001 terror attacks.
The plane had been in the air five hours and was in Canadian airspace when it was refused entrance into US airspace, according to Hugo Baas, a KLM Royal Dutch Airlines spokesperson.
The plane returned to Amsterdam because it was assigned to a Canadian airport that could not handle a reconfigured Boeing 747 carrying 278 people and 15 horses.
Baas said the two passengers were not arrested in Amsterdam but went on to London and ultimately returned to Saudi Arabia. US officials had been alerted by the Mexican authorities, according to two Homeland Security Department sources.
The US, Mexico and Canada have an agreement by which they electronically share passenger information airlines send them before planes land. This, however, can take time, as the KLM flight demonstrated.
Cliff Mackay, president of the Air Transport Association of Canada, said Canadian and US officials are discussing the idea of extra checks. One question, Mackay said, would be whether US authorities would want passengers checked on east-west flights that might skirt US airspace or only on those flights that cross significant parts of US territory.
He also said Canada is developing its own ”no-fly” list and it is possible that US airlines flying into Canadian airspace would face the same requirements. — Guardian Unlimited Â