It will be OK for airline passengers to bring most types of cigarette lighters on board beginning next month after authorities decided a ban on the devices did little to make flying safer, according to a New York Times report Friday.
Starting Aug. 4, passengers will be allowed to carry on disposable butane lighters, such as Bics, and refillable lighters, including Zippos, according to the newspaper. A prohibition on torch-style lighters, which have hotter flames, will continue.
"Taking lighters away is security theater," Transportation Security Administration chief Kip Hawley told The Times in an interview.
Lighters have been barred from checked bags for decades because of concerns they could start fires in cargo holds.
Congress banned lighters from flights after Richard Reid used matches to try to light explosives hidden in his shoes while on a Paris-to-Miami flight in 2001. Lawmakers worried that Reid might have succeeded if he had had a lighter. The lighter ban took effect in April 2005.
Security screeners collect an average of 22,000 lighters a day, and it costs about 4 million U.S. dollars a year to dispose of them, The Times reported.
Hawley said confiscating lighters has not helped security much because other items could be used to detonate bombs.
"The No. 1 threat for us is someone trying to bring bomb components through the security checkpoint," he said. "We don't want anything that distracts concentration from searching for that."
(Xinhua News Agency July 23, 2007)